The Prodigal Son (40 page)

“Well, look at you!” Matthew said. “You swim like a fish.”

“Let’s not exaggerate,” Alex muttered, “more like a drowning monkey.” A very cute little monkey, now sitting on his father’s shoulders with his hair plastered to his head while Mark swam in elegant circles around them.

Ian waded out to where Matthew was, and Alex smiled at her boys. Beautiful, all of them – from Daniel with his baby fat to Ian’s sinewy body. But it was to her man her eyes returned time and time again; strong and tall, all of him glowing with health and life.

Matthew turned in her direction and smiled, his eyes blazing gold in a sudden shaft of afternoon sunlight.

“I love you,” he mouthed and dived into the water. And I love you, she replied silently, thanking God yet again for having given him to her.

Chapter 34

Joan looked terrible. A waxy pallor made her grey eyes stand like blots of ink on white paper and her hair hung dull and lifeless round her face.

“Ill?” Alex hissed to Matthew. “She looks like a corpse!”

Matthew squeezed her hand in admonishment and went over to help his sister down from the horse.

“I can do that myself,” Joan said when Matthew bent down to retrieve the handkerchief she had dropped.

“I’m sure you can, but I was brought up to be polite, aye?”

Joan mumbled an excuse and turned round to receive Lucy in her arms. Not yet two, Lucy was remarkably self-possessed, regarding her boisterous boy cousins with wide, grey eyes. She twisted in Joan’s arms and was set down, standing in perfect stillness when the boys moved towards her. But it was only when she saw Ian that she smiled, two dimples appearing on her cheeks.

Alex hung back at first, keeping her distance as Simon and Matthew slapped each other on the back, but after a sequence of shared looks with Joan she moved towards her.

“What’s the matter with you?” Alex asked, taking Joan by the arm.

“Matter with me?” Joan shrugged free of Alex’ hold.

“Oh, don’t give me that. And even if Matthew may be too considerate to ask, I can tell you he’s wondering and worrying too.”

Joan inhaled, did a half-turn, and exhaled. “There is something wrong with my humours and my physician has recommended that I eat sparingly of dry bread and drink moderately. I’m to be bled several times a week.”

Alex looked her over. “Bullshit, if anything you’re undernourished, and to bleed you just makes you even more anaemic.”

Joan frowned at her language. “I‘ve consulted several physicians, and they are men of education.”

Alex raised her brows. “Unlike me, you mean? Quacks, the lot of them, and now that you’re here you’ll eat and drink as I tell you.”

Joan started to protest but Alex shook her head.

“Two weeks. And then let’s see how you feel, alright?”

Joan eyed her with an mixture of respect and resentment. “You’re a most overbearing person.”

“I know, it’s one of the things I always have very long conversations with God about.” Luckily, Joan chose not to comment, however much she pressed her mouth together.

After dinner, Matthew led Simon into the privacy of his office, poured them each a whisky and sat down.

“Ian,” he said, “I want him back.”

Simon frowned and tented his hands, studying him for a long time.

“Are you sure?”

Matthew made an irritated noise. Of course he was sure!

“And Alex?”

“She knows what I mean to do.”

“Hmm,” Simon said, “and she understands it means Mark will lose Hillview?”

The bald statement made Matthew balk at the thought of explaining all of this to Mark, but the lad was only seven, and he loved Ian – anyone could see that. He’d grow out of his loss, he assured Simon, who grunted that in his experience brotherly love was one of the first casualties in disputes over inheritance – as Matthew well knew.

“I’ll ensure all my sons are well set up,” Matthew said.

“Oh, aye, I’m sure you will.”

But the single most valuable asset in Matthew’s control was the small manor and that would go unimpaired to the eldest, leaving very little for the others to share. Three – no, four – sons already.

“Are you planning many more?” For all that Simon tried, Matthew could hear the jealousy in his voice. He shifted on his seat, looked out through the small window to where Alex and Joan were sitting in the shade.

“There will be more, I reckon. Alex is still young, and…”

“You’re both willing in bed,” Simon finished for him with a small grin.

“How is it with you?” Matthew asked, keeping his eyes on anything but Simon. “Do you…”

Simon choked on his whisky, coughing for several minutes. “Aye,” he finally managed to say.

Wee Simon was lying through his teeth, made very obvious to Matthew by how his friend looked him straight in the eyes, those pale blue eyes of his never faltering. Well; he couldn’t well push, not into matters as private as what went on in the marital bed, and from Simon’s stance any further questions would be unwelcome. Instead he returned to the matter at hand.

“Will it be complicated do you think, to claim Ian as mine?”

“Aye,” Simon said, “and if Luke doesn’t want to renounce him, nigh on impossible.” His eyes drifted to the outside, resting on Ian, who was pushing Lucy back and forth on the rope swing. “I hear Margaret is pregnant again.”

“Aye, due in November. Ian had a letter from her yesterday and when he’d read it he threw it into the fire.”

Matthew had been curious and used the poker to retrieve the paper, smoothing it out to read a long, gushing description of wee Charlie, and of how happy Luke was that soon there would be yet another child. There was a rather sad postscript, added in scrawled and misspelled haste, where she confessed to missing him, every day she missed her Ian, and hoped he missed her too, but what with her being bedridden, maybe it was for the best if…

“Caught in the middle,” Simon said. “Poor woman.”

“Aye.” Matthew opened a drawer and drew out a miniature, badly singed along one side. “She included this.”

It was an excellent piece of work, bringing to life the laddie who sat in long smocks decorated with lace and ribbons and smiled shyly at the beholder. Eyes glittering greens, hair that fell in soft, wavy lengths of dark red round a face that was a smaller version of Margaret’s, down to the pointed little chin. In one chubby hand the boy held a rattle, in the other a silver spoon.

“Well, no doubt there. That’s definitely Luke Graham’s son.” Simon chewed his lip. “It can’t be easy for the lad,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of Ian. “Now that he has this copy of himself, how can Luke look at Ian with anything but resentment at having been tricked into recognising him as his son, thereby cheating his legitimate son out of his inheritance?”

“So maybe Luke can be convinced to let Ian go, now that he has this wee lad.” Matthew heard how ridiculously hopeful he sounded.

Simon snorted. “If Luke knows you want him, he’ll keep him, if nothing else to spite you.”

Alex regarded Ian with maternal pride when he let Lucy take his hand and drag him towards the three other boys, busy with a loud intricate game involving long sticks.

“She’s a pretty little girl,” Alex said, feeling a hollow ache inside of her.

Joan smiled in the direction of her daughter. “Aye she is. And stubborn like her father – not that it will be of much help.” This last was said with a certain acidity.

“Help?” Alex studied her niece, who had somehow grasped that the purpose of the game was to fell Daniel to the ground and sit on him.

“No one will ever want to marry her, seeing as she’s deaf.”

Alex looked at Lucy but saw another girl, her little girl. “At least she’s alive,” she said and got to her feet.

She was sitting by Rachel’s grave when the gate to the graveyard squeaked, but she didn’t turn, keeping her hand on the sun warmed stone that had her daughter’s name on it. Joan lowered herself to her knees beside her.

“You must miss her a lot,” she said.

“Every day, almost every hour I think of her and wonder why she isn’t here. When I go in to kiss them goodnight it always surprises me that she isn’t in there with the others, and every time the pigs squeal I find myself thinking that Rachel is up to something again, then I remember that of course she isn’t because she’s dead. Dead!” Alex plucked a white rose from the bush and placed it on the headstone, brushing imaginary dirt off it first. “I hate the thought that she lies rotting in the dark, and I have these awful dreams where she’s crying and holding up a half-eaten arm and asks me to do something.” She crossed her arms tight over her chest.

“She’s with God.” Joan placed her hand on Alex’ shoulder.

“Yes, that’s what all of you say. Matthew, Sandy, you – even Ian.” She looked over to where Matthew and Simon had come out from the house and were wandering towards the children. “It doesn’t help, because she should be here, with me, not dead in the ground.”

“Oh, Alex of course she should! But she isn’t, not anymore, and you must trust that she is happy wherever she is.” She smiled slightly. “We must hope that they have pigs in heaven.”

Alex laughed at the ridiculous image of white heavenly pigs, and then began to cry instead.

“She would like that,” she said through her tears.

Matthew took Simon with him into Cumnock to attend Oliver’s trial, returning with a grim expression on his face. When Alex tried to talk to him, he brushed her off, saying it was nothing and that he needed some time alone.

“It’s that major,” Simon said to Alex, lowering himself with some effort to sit in the grass beside her. “That accursed perjurer repeated that it wasn’t him, it was Matthew Graham who killed Tom Brown and his wife. He even said he’d seen it, with his own eyes.”

“But no one believed him,” Alex said, her eyes on where her husband had ducked out of sight.

“Nay, of course not. But it was difficult for Matthew nonetheless.” Simon gave her a sad look. “They hanged the Brown lad. Not yet sixteen, and they hanged him. So now it is just the eldest lad and the two lasses. What a waste!” He shook himself, settled himself against the trunk of the nearest tree and nodded in the direction of his wife. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but she looks much better.”

“It helps to eat, and whatever idiot suggested she be bled regularly should have his head examined or preferably bashed in.” Alex finished mending the long gash in Daniel’s smock and folded it together, fishing out the next garment in line from her basket.

Simon grinned. “Now why do I think Doctor Guthrie would not like to hear you say such?”

“Because he’s a pompous moron?”

“Alex! He’s an educated man.”

“And?” She dropped her eyes to her sewing. “It would also help if you stopped going to that whore.”

“Whore?”

“She knows, and strangely enough she sees nothing wrong in it.” If it had been her, she’d have rammed a poker up his arse. Okay; maybe a bit excessive, but still.

“Well then you’d best not meddle,” he said coldly.

“It’s breaking her heart.”

He exhaled, dragging angrily at the grass. “I love my wife, but I’m only thirty-eight. I can’t live in celibacy and I do my best to be discreet. You shouldn’t presume to judge when you don’t have all the facts.”

All the facts? Joan had admitted to being terrified of becoming pregnant again and apparently it had never occurred to her that one could have a pretty good time in bed without going the whole way. And now it seemed Simon was just as unenlightened …

“There are other ways, you know.”

“Other ways?” He regarded her guardedly.

“You know; to… err… well, please each other.” She gathered together her mending and stood. “Talk to Matthew,” she said and walked off.

“What possessed you?” Matthew barked, somewhere in between exasperation and amusement. “You left him shocked.”

“I didn’t tell him anything in any detail.”

“Nay, that you left to me,” Matthew muttered. He chuckled and shook his head. “Have you spoken to Joan? You know, about how…”

Alex squirmed and admitted that yes, she had.

“And what did she say?”

“First she said nothing, then she said nothing, after that she said absolutely nothing and then she began to laugh.”

“Ah,” Matthew nodded.

“And then she said no wonder I insisted so much on people washing all the time,” Alex added primly, making Matthew howl with laughter.

Chapter 35

Matthew waited until Captain Howard had dismounted before moving over to him.

“Captain,” he said extending his hand. If Howard was surprised he didn’t show it, grasping Matthew’s hand in his. “Your leg?”

“Better.” The captain adjusted the sling on his bandaged arm. A strained silence ensued, with Matthew waiting for the captain to state his business while the captain obviously was looking for Alex. Finally Howard dug into the pocket of his long coat and brought out a folded note, handing it to Matthew.

“I refused at first, but seeing as the major pleaded, I promised I would deliver it to you in person.”

“Why would Wyndham write to me?”

“I have no idea, I’m not in the habit of perusing other men’s letters.” Howard smiled when he saw Alex come down from the kitchen garden, a loaded basket on her arm, and raised his hand in greeting. She waved back and changed course towards them.

Howard gawked, looking like a lovesick lad – or an adoring hound, given those dark eyes of his. His eyes stuck to Alex, and Matthew wasn’t sure whether to reprimand him or laugh. She was a pretty sight, his Alex, in sandals and with the sleeves of her chemise bunched with ribbons – blue ribbons that matched the embroidery on the green, sleeveless bodice.

“Captain,” Alex came to a stop and set down the loaded basket. Howard bowed in her direction, looked into her basket and gave a short bark of laughter.

“Potatoes?” He picked one up. “My uncle grows them in his garden, but it’s rare to see them grown this far from London.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it, it took me years just to find someone who’d sell me some seed tubers.” She smiled down at her basket. “First crop ever, so today the Graham men will be dining on potatoes and trout. I can’t wait to see their impressed faces.” She laughed and swung the basket back up on her arm. “Raspberries for dessert,” she promised, sending Matthew a look before she strolled off in the direction of the house.