The Traitor's Daughter (13 page)

“No. Because of—”

“Mother? She wouldn't let you write to us?”

He looked pained. “Please understand. I was a child.”

She understood very well. Mother would have exacted a harsh price for disobedience. Kate's heart ached for him.

“Once I was old enough to know,” he went on, “it seemed pointless, because by then I thought I would never come home. I was
made
to believe that.”

Kate could well imagine. “Where is she now?”

“Brussels. Still lives with the Duchess of Feria.”

The luxurious house on Balienplein Place, a leafy square lined with the mansions of the rich. Kate had once lived there, too. The widowed duchess, an Englishwoman who had married a Spanish duke, was Mother's old friend.

“They made me a frightened fool,” he said, jabbing back into place an errant lock of his hair, “she and the Duchess. I lived nervous as a cat.”

There was a jerkiness to his movements. It struck Kate that what had seemed jarring in his appearance was not just that he had matured, but that as an adult he seemed so familiar. The sharp features, the angular body. She was looking at a male version of their mother.

“So you've lived in Brussels all this time?”

“No. Well, at first, yes. Then I left to study medicine. The University of Padua.”

“And became a physician.” She smiled at him with enormous admiration. “I think it's wonderful.” Because he helped the sick, but also because his studies had taken him far away from Mother.

He smiled back. The first smile she had seen from him, a tentative one, but it warmed her. “And you?” he asked as though suddenly eager to know now that the door between them had been opened. “Where are you living now?”

“In London.”

His smile broadened. “Are you going to tell me you're a married lady with four children?”

How much did she dare confide? He was her brother, her blood, the sweet friend of her childhood, and she wanted to tell him everything, to open her heart. But she knew she must tell him as little as possible. “I am married, yes, but no children. Our wedding was just eight months ago.”

He glanced at her waist and quipped, “Nine is all you need.”

That made her smile, and a bubble of happiness rose in her. They were jesting almost like the old days. “His name is Owen Lyon and he's a playwright and I know you will love him when you meet him.”

He gave her a look of astonishment. “Married into the theater! And I must call you
Mistress Lyon!
” He said it with as much affection as surprise. But then his face clouded. “And Father?” he asked.

She heard the brittleness in his voice. Had he not forgiven Father for leaving him behind? “He is well. He remarried. You remember Mistress Fenella?”

“She with the Dutch rebel friends?” He sounded amazed. “He
married
her?”

“Yes. They have been wed these ten years and are very happy. And she has been wondrous kind to me.”

He stopped. They were completely alone on the path now, the sounds of the town behind them faint. “Kate,” he said very seriously, “you must not tell him about me.”

She hesitated. Her very purpose in coming here was to persuade him to seek a reconciliation with their father. It was only right. But her own position in the family was so precarious. “The truth is, Father does not approve of my husband.” Impossible to leap into an explanation that Owen had been imprisoned, and why. This was not the time. “As a playwright he is beneath me, Father feels. So Father and I . . . well, we are not on speaking terms. I hope he will come round eventually—I believe he shall—but for now Owen and I are living with Grandmother.”

This seemed to disturb him. “You do not see Father?”

“No. He is . . . angry with me. But, Robin, you can change that.”

“I? How?”

“Give me leave to tell him you have come back.”

He jabbed at his hair again in frustration. “Oh, Lord, this is not what I wanted. I am tainted, Kate. Because of Mother. You know that. Tainted by association. The one thing I did
not
want was to taint you, too, and yes, even Father. So no, you must not tell him. You must let me carry on as I am, keeping my head down, making my own way, separate from you both. Don't you see? It's best for your sake, too.”

“But that's so wrong! Living with people who are not your family? Pretending to be someone you are not? Who are these people, the Levetts?”

“He's a merchant, a colleague of a man in Padua whose son is a friend of mine. When I said I wanted to go to England they offered to contact Master Levett. He and his wife kindly took me in. But I will eventually find a place of my own.”

“With what? Have you any money?”

“Not much.”

And Father is a wealthy man,
she thought.
A man with no heir.
It stung her to remember the ultimatum he had threatened on London Bridge:
Leave your husband or be disinherited.
Well, she had made her decision and would live with it. One day Father would know the truth about her and would soften. Meanwhile, her brother was an innocent in this.
He should not have to suffer for our sins.
“Robin, you cannot sustain this life. Hiding. Friendless. You need to be with your own people. You need to come home.”

Exasperated, he started walking again. Kate kept at his side. They were in a wide-open space now, a plain that stretched out, peaceful and serene, all the way to the looming chalk cliffs. Cows grazed in the water meadows. The breeze undulated through the tall grasses flecked with wildflowers, the golds and purples of autumn, and there was a fragrance of lavender. But Kate could see that, farther ahead, the river widened. It was a tidal waterway where seaweed would be exposed at low tide and the air would have a salty marine tang.

“I would have been fine,” Robert said, “if Prowse had not told you.”

“But he did, and now I know and there's no going back.”

“Maybe there is. You could leave me, right here, right now. Let me make my own way. Go back to London and forget about me.”

This sent a lash of guilt through her.
Father chose me. Left you.
“No,” she said firmly. “We did that once before. This time, you shall not be left behind.”

He stopped again and gave her a heartrending look. “Kate, you cannot know how hard it was to live away from England all those years. Away from everything dear.” He looked at the plain of swaying grasses. “From all of this. From
you.
I so longed to come home. I
needed
to come home.”

“And now you have. That took great courage. Come back to
us
now, too. Let me tell Father.”

He looked anguished, torn. Was she bending him? Would one more push win him? “Do it for me, Robin. As a great favor. Because if I bring Father this news he might soften toward
me.
”

His face creased with indecision. But Kate saw the flicker of hope in his eyes. “I so want to, Kate—”

“Then do!”

“But . . . won't he hate me?” he stammered. “For all the years I spent with Mother?”

“Nonsense. No one blames you for that.” A shard of memory cut through her thoughts. Owen telling her to beware of her brother. Her angry retort:
No one censures me for my mother's crime. Surely the same holds for Robert.
But Owen had not been convinced.
You have not been raised by her,
he'd said.
Your brother has.
But Kate knew now she was right. By coming home Robert had cut all ties with their mother. He was to be commended, not condemned.

“Then it's settled,” she said with firmness. “I will tell Father you're here.”

He said nothing, but the ghost of a smile tugged his mouth.

It made her so happy, she coaxed, “In law, you know, silence implies consent.”

A smile broke across his face, lighting his eyes. “Dear Kate.” He enfolded her in a warm embrace. Hugging him, she felt too much to speak. She choked back happy tears, and pulled away just as a sound reached them, a rumbling, far off to the west. They both looked to the western sky. Darkness, like a bruise, was creeping over the horizon.

“Rain coming,” Robert muttered.

The landlord was right, Kate thought with a shiver. Well, if she must ride in a downpour so be it. She should cover half the distance to London by nightfall. An inn for the night, with dry clothes and a warm bed. Then, London the next day.

She looked at her brother, glad of this day's work. But concern nibbled a corner of her mind. She could not protect him from everything. If Robert's return troubled Owen, it would trouble the Queen's councillors even more.

“I spoke lightly of the law just now,” she said, “but I must warn you, there may be legal pitfalls for you yet. You have spent your youth with a known traitor.”

“But you said—”

“Don't worry. Father, I feel sure, will not impugn your motives. But he is Her Majesty's loyal councillor and his service to her rules his life. He will consider it his duty to alert his fellow councillors of your return. So be prepared. They will want to question you.”

“Interrogation?” There was brittleness again in his voice. “It does not surprise me. Though I have tried to live here quietly, and bring no attention to myself, part of me always thought the day might come when I'd be taken to task.”

“You shall have stout voices speaking on your behalf. Master Levett for one, an upstanding citizen I do not doubt. Your patients, too. And don't forget old Master Prowse. He will sing your praises loud and long.”

“Prowse?” He gave her a stricken look. “Good Lord, Kate, I haven't told you. The shock of seeing you knocked it clear out of my head.”

“Told me what?”

“The good old man is dead. He was walking his dog on the sea cliff and fell, they say. His body was found on the beach.”

 

Rain pounded the south of England for two days, borne on a chill north wind. The Sussex fields were drenched sponges, the roads and lanes a mire of mud. Broken branches littered the city streets. Ficket's Field outside London wall was as sodden as a marsh.

Robert was half mud himself as he tied his wet horse to a dripping tree, straddled the waist-high stone wall behind the Plough Inn, hopped down, and squelched through the stable yard muck. He had left Lewes just an hour after he and Kate had parted, but the sorry state of the roads had made slow going, and he hadn't got halfway to London when night fell and the darkness and rain made it impossible to go on. He'd set out before dawn from the wayside inn, but it still took all day to get here. So when he opened the stable door he was relieved to see he was not too late. Walter Townsend was waiting.

“Thank God,” Townsend said. “I was about to give up on you.”

“Filthy riding,” Robert said, closing the door.

“I know. I was afraid my horse would snap a bone. What's happened? Urgent, your note said.”

Robert held up his hands in a gesture that said:
Wait.
He shivered, for he was soaked to the skin. He rubbed his hands, stiff from the cold and his exhausting ride. The stink of the decrepit stable hit him as it had before. Spending the night here was not a pleasant prospect, bedding down in straw mildewed from horse piss. But even that could not dim his excitement. Kate's response had been all that he'd dared to hope for, and more.

“Well?” Townsend looked worried.
As usual,
Robert thought. “I can't stay, Parry, I must get back.”

Parry.
Robert allowed himself a smile, thinking that soon he'd be able to buck this pseudonym he'd been saddled with. He could leave the shadows of anonymity and step out into the public light. It made him feel slightly giddy. He grinned at Townsend. “Good news. I have reason to believe that soon I'll be welcomed into the house of a prominent lord here in London. Permanently. It will be the ideal position from which to operate.”

“A member of our cause?”

“No. Of the enemy.”

Townsend gave a low whistle of admiration. “And a lord withal! Who is it?”

“I cannot say. Not until it's sure. But that,” he added slyly, “will not be the
only
happy disclosure.” The public light would reveal him to the world as the only son of Baron Thornleigh. Robert was so pleased he could have danced a jig. Once he was back in the bosom of his family, who would suspect his actions? No one. His father was the Queen's loyal and trusted friend.

But his satisfaction was marred by a cold current running beneath. He had used Kate. Lied to her. Lured her to him and then manipulated her. She was no fool, but their bond was so strong, forged so tightly during their childhood suffering, it would never occur to her to mistrust him. Dear Kate. Like him, she was now an outcast. That news had surprised him. When he had lived in Paris he'd had good intelligence about his father through the exiles' networks run by Westmorland and Charles Paget, so he'd known of his father's remarriage—his response to Kate about that had been feigned—but since coming back to England the information he'd received had been piecemeal. He had not known about Kate's marriage to a playwright, nor of the rupture between her and their father. Perhaps Paget considered such domestic details unimportant. When she'd told him of the rupture he'd had a moment of panic, for he had been counting on her good offices. But then she had begged him to let her effect a reconciliation for both their sakes, and he was satisfied. He felt certain she would achieve it. He had only to wait.