The Clergyman's Daughter (7 page)

The flat-columned facade of the house rose grim and forbidding under threatening skies as Jessica peered warily out the window of the coach, and with a sigh of resignation she pulled the leather curtain shut. She had dreaded this moment for days, ever since Raeburn had found her in Brighton. She had been so distraught at the prospect of returning to the estate that she had been only partially conscious of the time they had spent in London, time during which the earl had sent word to his family to prepare for the prodigal’s return, time during which he had wound up his affairs in Town and, incidentally, had also called in an expensive but discreet modiste to outfit Jessica with a new wardrobe to take to Renard Chase with her.

Jessica gazed down at her fashionable gown of lilac half-mourning, comparing it with the threadbare black dress that she had been wearing when Raeburn found her, the same dress she had worn the night she fled from his home. Half mad with anguish, she had wanted nothing that would remind her of the inhabitants of that house, and she and Willa had escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Later, when those garments had faded and frayed, Willa had advised her mistress to use part of the money paid her by her publishers to purchase something sturdy and warm, but Jessica had clung to her widow’s weeds as if they were a shield, a battle-scarred banner, with each new rent and tear a further charge against the Foxes…. Of course she hadn’t told Raeburn that. When he said grimly that he was ordering new clothing for her, she had made little comment, beyond a tight-lipped insistence that she was not ready to put aside her mourning entirely, even after thirteen months.

Jessica sighed and glanced anxiously at her daughter. The interior of the coach was extremely cold, but, wrapped in a warm new blanket of softest Kashmir wool, Lottie slept peacefully in Willa’s arms, lulled by the rocking motion of the well-sprung carriage marked with the Raeburn crest. Had it really been only a little more than a year since Andrew’s death? Jessica mused. It seemed to her that she had lived forever in dread of discovery. But no, only thirteen short months had passed, and now she was returning to Renard Chase, as everything she had ever feared came true…. She wondered drearily how long it would be before the Foxes made their move to take the baby from her. In her heart she knew it was only a matter of time.

A faint cough attracted her attention, and she turned to look at the man sitting beside her, his long legs stretched diagonally across the narrow space between the two seats, catching the hem of the rug covering Jessica’s lap and crowding her tightly into the corner. Raeburn was peering at her intently, his wide brow furrowed as if he were trying to see into her mind.

“Jess, do you really hate Renard Chase so much?” he inquired quietly, his tone oddly gentle. With resignation she nodded silently, and after a moment he noted with forced lightness, “That’s strange. I’ve always vastly preferred it to any of my other houses.”

Aware that sullen rudeness would serve no purpose, Jessica made an effort to smile. “I’ve never denied that the Chase is beautiful,” she conceded with characteristic honesty. Andrew had explained to her once that the seventeenth-century house was one of the earliest efforts of John Webb, a student of Inigo Jones, and while its Palladian design was clearly imitative, more suited to a Mediterranean clime, the architecture was light and graceful, a symphony of white marble and airy arcades that were singularly inviting in the summer. Andrew had loved the house too, never understanding that to Jessica those tall Ionic columns bad seemed like sentries bent on keeping her, the interloper, outside…. When she and Willa had sneaked out of the sleeping house in the middle of the night, she had heard her footsteps echoing behind her, and to her distressed mind they had sounded like the mocking laughter of all the Foxes who had ever lived there.

Raeburn said, “I think you could be happy if you’d try, Jess. In your heart you know your daughter belongs here, and I want you to feel that you also belong. Promise me you’ll make an effort. That’s all I ask.”

Jessica smiled without humor, her memories still too vivid to make concession easy. “I think perhaps you ask too much, Graham,” she muttered.

Raeburn’s tone hardened, and his eyes pointedly remarked her new clothes and the color that was already returning to her cheeks due to her improved diet. “My dear sister-in-law,” he said icily, “most women would be on their knees with prayers of gratitude at such an opportunity. To have one’s wants so generously provided for with no requirement in return beyond a modicum of common courtesy—surely such duties will not be too taxing for someone of your undeniable…resources?”

His voice lifted interrogatively, reminding Jessica of his repeated questions on the subject of how she had survived during the past year. She knew he was frankly mistrustful of her claims that she had supported her family by giving drawing lessons, and she suspected that only the patent lack of any male presence in her household had prevented him from accusing her of accepting some man’s carte blanche. More than once she had been tempted to tell him the truth, disclosing her identity as the cartoonist Erinys, but each time she opened her mouth to speak her furious denials had been silenced by the ominous realization that she needed to preserve her anonymity in case she and her child should have to flee the Chase again. She thought with grim satisfaction of her secret account in the Brighton bank. To Raeburn the sum of Jessica’s assets would seem niggling, pitifully small, but to Jessica that small amount of money spelled security. On that day when the earl at last manufactured some pretext for taking Lottie from her, he would discover to his chagrin that his widowed sister-in-law was not the typically helpless, utterly vulnerable female that he assumed her to be….

The carriage passed through the arched gates and onto the smooth graveled driveway, shifting slightly at the difference in road surface. The baby whimpered uneasily
in
Willa’s arms, and the maid crooned soothingly to her. Jessica glanced warily at Raeburn. Like most men, he was not enamored of young children, and he had assumed that Lottie would travel separately with Willa in the slower baggage coach; however, when Jessica had reminded him, flushing, that she needed to stay beside her daughter in order to feed her, he had vetoed the suggestion that she too ride with her maid. The breaking weather had made it unlikely that Raeburn would then elect to make the journey on his great gray stallion while the women rode inside the elegant carriage, but still Jessica had thought that somehow he would find a way to travel apart from them. When they had all been crowded into the coach, Raeburn ignoring Willa as if she were invisible and taking only minimal notice of Lottie, Jessica wondered irritably if he feared she would try to leap from the moving carriage if he did not keep her under constant surveillance.

But when, at irregular intervals, Jessica had draped her shawl modestly over her thin shoulders before she unbuttoned the bodice of her dress to nurse her baby, her irritation was superseded by another emotion that she was unable to name.

Raeburn watched her actions with a hooded intensity that disturbed her deeply, his close gaze making her extremely reluctant to bare her breast in his presence, even for this most natural of purposes. Somehow all she could think of was that day by the roadside when his large hands had fondled her in a way no man had ever done before, and she blushed deeply, wondering if he remembered it too…. Inevitably her tension had communicated itself to her child, making Lottie fussy and colicky.
The
dreary journey out of London had begun to stretch endlessly.

“It’s good to be home,” Raeburn said fervently when the carriage swayed to a halt at the foot of the wide steps leading up to the colonnaded portico. He glanced at Jessica as if challenging her to dispute his exclamation, and she refrained from commenting that in winter she found the cold marble facade of Renard Chase about as inviting as an iceberg.

Silently she adjusted her bonnet, her lips pursed, her green eyes unreadable. An instant later a footman garbed in smart blue and gray livery swung open the door, and when he stepped back, bowing deeply, Raeburn looked out the door, recoiling in surprise. “Oh, damn,” he muttered, “what does that woman think this is, a royal progress?” After a second he leaped down from the coach with that grace that always surprised Jessica and turned to hold out his hand to her.

Leaning forward from the squabs, Jessica saw what had startled him; a double row of servants flanked up the steps, waiting in the chilly, frost-laden wind with grim expectation, silent and intimidating. She hesitated in confusion, fighting down an urgent desire to slam the door shut again. As she wavered, Raeburn’s wide mouth thinned, and in a low rumble he chided, “Buck up, my girl, I thought you had more spirit than that….” With a sigh of resignation Jessica pulled her pelisse tight about her and placed her small, mittened hand in his.

Rigidly she mounted the marble steps, her chin high, her arm tucked securely through Raeburn’s. He nodded cordially to the senior members of his household and muttered again, with less humor, “Dammit, Jess, relax! Despite the way they’re lined up, these are my servants, not some Paris mob, so there’s no need for you to act like an
aristo
climbing into a tumbril.”

“I’m not an aristocrat at all,” she shot back acidly, her eyes trained on a point somewhere above the powdered head of the butler at the top of the stairs. “That’s the problem. There’s not a man or woman here who doesn’t know that my birth is as humble as their own. They’d be more willing to accept—”

“They’ll accept you as my sister-in-law,” the earl growled impatiently. “That’s all that matters.”

“Oh, Graham, don’t be
naif,”
Jessica began, thinking of the thousand little slights she had suffered when she first came to Renard Chase, the tiny indignities she had suffered as the servants, taking their cue from their master’s offhand attitude, reminded her in their own subtle ways that she was no better than….

“Graham, you’re back!” a light, musical voice squealed with unfeigned delight, and as Jessica hesitated, startled, a tall girl with bright red hair rocketed out of the doorway and burst through the ranks of servants, flinging herself at the earl.

Jessica recoiled instinctively as Raeburn released her arm. She was not ready yet to meet her enemy…. Raeburn caught the girl easily, his massive chest absorbing the impact of her exuberant greeting as he steadied her slender shoulders with his large hands. “Easy now, Clairie,” he teased, hugging her fondly, “else you’ll have us all rolling around like ninepins at the foot of the stairs. Comport yourself as a lady and prove to Jess that you’ve abandoned your hoydenish ways since last she saw you.”

“Oh, Graham”—the girl laughed, her bouncing curls gleaming ruddily in the watery sunlight—“don’t you start sounding like Aunt Talmadge! She wanted me to sit in the parlor doing needlework until you called for me, but I just couldn’t wait that long. I had to see you.” She turned to face Jessica, and her naturally pale cheeks were faintly pink. “J-Jessica?” she ventured, as if uncertain of her reception.

Jessica struggled to school her expression, astonished by that hesitant note in her young sister-in-law’s voice, so different from the imperious tone she had always affected in the past. Staring at her, Jessica realized that Claire’s attitude was not the only thing that had altered considerably since she first met her. The coltish, freckled fifteen-year-old whose unruly red hair had been worn in frizzy plaits was now a young woman, tall and slim, her blossoming figure graceful in a fashionable day dress of cream-colored wool. The freckles had faded, and the startling hair, cropped, was worn in a tangle of curls, the deceptively artless coiffure that Raeburn said took two maids to achieve. Only those wide brown eyes were as Jessica remembered them, dark and velvety, and they reminded her so much of her husband that she shivered.

Raeburn sensed that shudder, and his hand caught her wrist, as if he feared she might flee. “Well, Jess, have you nothing to say?” he demanded.

Jessica continued to gaze at the girl, her emotions an unstable amalgam of pain and nostalgia. At last she murmured, “I had forgotten how very like Andrew you are…Lady Claire.” She could not help the irony that crept into her voice as she added that title, but when she saw the girl’s obvious chagrin, she wished she had maintained better control over her tongue.

“Oh, please, Jessica,” Claire pleaded, “don’t—don’t be so formal with me. I—I want us to be sisters now.”

“Sisters, my lady?” Jessica queried drily, and she felt Raeburn’s grip tighten so painfully around her wrist that she winced.

“Yes, Jessica,” Claire continued earnestly, unaware of her brother’s action, “or at least, friends. I know I was a brat to you before, unbearably high in the instep, but—but I hope you’ll let all that be in the past now. We’ve both lost someone we loved very much, and I’d like to think that—that….”

Her young voice cracked suddenly, and Jessica realized that for a girl like Claire, cosseted and spoiled since birth; reared to believe in her inherent superiority, having her every whim catered to, such an apology must be difficult in the extreme. The daughters of earls were not often called upon to humble themselves before a clergyman’s offspring. For the first time in days, Jessica felt her chilled heart warm. Perhaps there was hope, after all…. With real gratitude for the effort the girl was making, Jessica leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “My dearest sister,” she said quietly.

From beneath lowered lashes she glanced up at Raeburn, expecting to read pleasure in his narrowed gray eyes—or perhaps mockery—at her capitulation. But, strangely, the expression she saw mirrored there was something quite different, something—unexpected. Jealousy? Jessica thought in bewilderment. Resentment because she had smiled at his sister? No, no, of course not….

Raeburn asked abruptly, “Where’s Aunt Talmadge, Claire? There’s someone else the two of you must meet.” He turned and beckoned to Willa, who had stood apart, Lottie cradled expertly in her arms. “Come, girl,” he barked, and Willa stepped forward between the ranks of liveried footmen, her weak chin held high as she ignored their knowing glances.