When the Splendor Falls (82 page)

Leigh nodded, unable to speak, because she knew more than Althea how close Guy was to regaining his sight, and then, with or without Lys Helene, he would return to Virginia, to Travers Hill, and he and Althea, working together, would have a much better chance of beginning again—and succeeding in making a new life for themselves.

“We will talk more of this, Leigh. We have to. I want to consult with Neil about what I should expect to find when I return to Virginia,” she said, sounding worried for an instant, but she’d already made up her mind and Leigh knew nothing she could say now would change it. “And I should speak with Nathaniel, because, although Steward is now heir to Royal Bay, Nathaniel was born there, and I would like to offer him the chance to claim any cherished possessions he might remember from childhood.”

“And what of Julia?” Leigh asked, speaking her childhood friend’s name for the first time in over a year.

Althea’s face hardened. “She forfeited that right. I never told you, because it was far too humiliating, but I wrote to Julia. I knew where Julia was staying in Paris, Aunt Maribel Lu and Uncle Jay saw her there, although Aunt Maribel Lu would not speak with her. When I was desperate in Richmond, I wrote asking for help. Aunt Maribel Lu had written that Julia had been dressed in the height of fashion, draped in jewels, had a house and carriage of her own, and could be seen dining in the most elegant and expensive restaurants. I thought she might be able to send us money, or perhaps even a box of essentials, still easily bought in Paris. She wrote that she was preparing for a trip to Venice and did not have much time, and she was rather short of cash, having spent her allowance on clothes. But she did send us a box of chocolates, her favorites, she said.”

“So very generous of her,” Althea said, her voice quivering with the same repressed fury she had felt at the time.

“I never knew,” Leigh said, unable to believe her friend could have been so selfish and uncaring, but as she thought back over the years, she knew that she’d always tried to excuse Julia’s actions, to find a generosity of spirit where there had been none.

“Well, I must go now,” Althea said, her silken skirts rustling as she took a step, then stopped. “Oh, and Leigh, I think you know that both Guy and I feel that anything you might wish to keep from Travers Hill is yours,” Althea added, the scent of violets lingering long after Althea had crossed the courtyard to stand in conversation for a moment with Lys Helene.

Leigh watched them, feeling a strange sadness as Althea took Guy’s arm and they walked away. Turning in the opposite direction, Leigh made her way to the study. Entering the quiet room, she walked to Nathaniel Braedon’s desk and placed the matches in the center of the blotter. Taking a piece of paper, she took the pen from the inkwell and wrote a note of explanation, placing the paper beneath the packet. She had walked halfway back across the room before she glanced at the portrait of Neil’s mother and sister.

As if compelled, Leigh unrolled the sketch and met the Comanche’s blue-eyed stare, remembering again the terror she’d felt when they’d met face-to-face, and yet…

“So beautiful,” Leigh murmured, glancing between the three faces.

“Yes, she was.” Nathaniel Braedon’s voice sounded so close behind her that Leigh drew in her breath in surprise, and guilt, almost choking on it as she spun around to find him standing just within the door.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said, watching her intently.

“Forgive me for intruding, but I left a packet of matches on your desk. That drifter, Michael Sebastian, dropped them when I was showing him where the north pasture was,” Leigh explained, her hands fumbling as she tried to roll back up the piece of vellum. “I assume he found you?”

“Yes. I’ve hired him, so he’ll have plenty of time to collect them,” Nathaniel said as he came to stand beside her in front of the portrait.

“I was just admiring the portrait of your first wife and your daughter,” Leigh said uncomfortably. “She was very beautiful. Fionnuala was her name, wasn’t it? I have seldom seen such brilliant blue eyes,” Leigh commented, glancing down instinctively at the rolled-up drawing in her hands.

“They were remarkable. Once you have seen eyes like hers you never forget them,” he said, his gaze never leaving the two faces. “Fionnuala Elissa Darcy was her name when I first met her…a lifetime ago.”

“It’s a lovely name. And your daughter’s name was Shannon?”

“Shannon Malveen. She was her mother’s daughter. Even in that picture, when she was just four years old, she was exquisite.”

“Fionnuala died in childbirth?” Leigh heard herself asking, then wished she hadn’t when she saw the bleak look that entered Nathaniel’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, I should not have asked,” she apologized quickly.

But Nathaniel hadn’t seemed to have heard as he continued to stare at the portrait of his beloved wife and child. “Died?” he asked, surprising her by the harshness of his voice. “She should never have died. She would be alive today, except for—” He broke off his words, as if he could not speak them. Then he said coldly, “I curse the day she told me she was carrying my son.”

Leigh stared at him in shocked silence, the drawing dropping from her hand.

“Any time a woman dies in childbirth it is a tragedy, especially if the child she carried was stillborn, but you have a living part of her with you,” Leigh said, thinking more of Lucinda than Neil in that moment. “You still have Neil, your son. And now he has returned safely from the war. You should be thankful, grateful that he is alive. That some part of Fionnuala still lives in him.”

“Neil.” He said the name almost as if cursing beneath his breath. “Neil always comes back. He always manages to survive. I knew he’d come back when Justin wouldn’t. There is nothing to be thankful for. Neil is destined to survive.”

Leigh felt as if she’d been slapped. She took a steadying breath, feeling a sudden, intense loyalty to Neil. “I never quite realized—or perhaps I refused to believe—how much you hated him. I think you must be the most hateful person I’ve ever met that you would not rejoice having your son return home to you, especially after losing Justin,” Leigh said, two spots of angry color burning in her cheeks. “When I think of the loved ones I’ll never see again, and here you stand sorry that your son lives, I-I could just…just—” she began, but Leigh couldn’t find strong enough words to express her feelings and turned away, but his hand shot out, grasping hold of her arm and holding her in front of the portrait.

Nathaniel glanced down into the young, beautiful face staring up at him in such condemnation, and although her eyes were a dark shade of blue, they suddenly reminded him of other eyes. He couldn’t bear to see such a look of loathing in them when they met his, and he found himself telling her what he’d never told another living soul.

“Hate Neil?” he repeated the words slowly, as if hard to comprehend. “No, I don’t hate him. When I first saw him I knew such fierce pride, such love for this son of mine. No, I don’t hate Neil. What I hate is myself and the curse I live with. Every time I look at Neil, at the son I loved, I see my own face staring back at me. Neil wasn’t created in God’s image, but in
my
image, in the image of a man who thought he was a god. Neil was to become a constant reminder to me of my arrogance. I was young and defiant, and contemptuous of everything but my own strength and will to hold on to what I had created, what was mine,” he said, his voice sounding like it must have years ago, bold with self-assurance.

“Riovado was mine. I defended it against all who dared to challenge me. This land I’d conquered was my kingdom.

“Fionnuala was mine. I loved her as I have loved no other, and Fionnuala loved me as a man dreams to be loved by a woman. And we were blessed.

“Shannon was the symbol of our love, of our divine existence. But we were too close to the heavens at Riovado.

“I nearly lost Fionnuala when she gave birth to Shannon. We hoped it was just the difficulties of a first birth, but later we knew it would be dangerous for her to have any more children. She was never completely well after that. But our love was not to be denied, and I worshipped Fionnuala with my heart and my body. And I wanted a son. A son in my image. I was all powerful, and I challenged anyone to take Fionnuala from me, especially after she told me she was with child. I’d never seen her looking so breathtakingly beautiful. She laughed and sang, and sewed clothes for her son—because she always gave me what I wanted. You cannot have a dynasty without a son to inherit, to carry on the noble family name,” he said with a bitter twist to his lips.

Nathaniel glanced up at the portrait. “She died in my arms, hemorrhaging away her life’s blood. But my son lived, and every day he grew stronger and healthier, and his hair was golden like mine, and his eyes a pale grayish-green, and when he raised his little fist into the air, shaking it in defiance, as if at the gods above, as his father had before him, I knew then they were mocking me. They had granted me my wish, given me my son, but at what price?” he asked, glancing back up at the portrait. “Are you familiar with mythology?”

Leigh nodded, unable to speak.

“As a boy, I was always fascinated by the stories of the gods. In this land, despite one’s Christian beliefs, it is easy to believe in those ancient myths. The Indians sense the power around them, they recognize the forces that influence their lives, and they are ruled by the beliefs that have been nurtured by what they cannot comprehend—what is beyond their reach, what they cannot change. Drought. Famine. Flood. Death. One comes to suspect that the gods sit up there on top of the mountains watching and waiting with infinite patience for some foolish mortal to challenge them, to change what has been proclaimed by them in their ancient wisdom. The myths are full of such tales, and of the gods’ jealousy and anger, and retribution, against a mere mortal who would aspire to such Olympian heights and try to steal their power. There was a man who dared. And why shouldn’t he? He was almost a god. There was nothing beyond his reach—except a son. And the gods smiled behind their hands, nodding to one another, then held them out, palms open, as if acquiescing.

“But nothing is given freely in this life, and you will learn that to your sorrow one day,” Nathaniel said strangely, staring down into Leigh’s widened eyes. “The gods gave the man a son. A golden son—gift of the gods. And they said they would watch over him, protect him throughout his life. But they had deceived the man. Every time they intervened, and saved the son’s life, they sacrificed another in his stead.

“Both father and son were damned. For those who died were wife and mother; daughter and sister; and son and brother,” Nathaniel spoke softly, his light gray eyes shadowed and sunken, his mouth, which once must have curled up at the corners when he smiled, like Neil’s, was hardened into a thin line by the guilt that years of suffering in silence had caused.

But Leigh felt no pity for him, and she pulled her arm away, meeting his gaze angrily as she said in a low voice, “You haven’t changed, Nathaniel Braedon. You’re still an arrogant man. You’ve been so full of bitterness and self-pity you kept the love you could have shared with your son, and with others, to yourself. Hoarding it like a miser. How could you have truly loved Fionnuala that you could turn away from her only son? He is of her flesh. She died so he could live. Neil was
her
gift to you, the man she loved. How do you think she would feel to know how you had received it, how you had treated her son?” Leigh demanded, angrier than she’d ever been as she thought of how Neil must have suffered all of these years and how another man, a far better man, Adam, had loved the child whose life might have caused his beloved Blythe’s death.

“My sister died shortly after giving birth to her only child, but did Adam turn away from that child? No, he loved his daughter more than his own life. He cherished the child born of the love he had for Blythe. To have turned against that child, for whatever reason, would have been a betrayal of that love. You may hate yourself for wanting that son, but Fionnuala gave her life so he could live. If you cannot see that, then she died for nothing,” Leigh said quietly, turning away from him.

She’d almost gotten to the door, when his harsh voice stopped her.

“You forgot this.”

Leigh took a shaky breath and turned around. Nathaniel was holding the rolled-up piece of vellum. Forcing herself to walk back toward him, her knees shaking, Leigh held out her hand.

Her eyes met his for a brief moment, while each held on to the roll of paper, then Nathaniel released his grip on the paper and turned away. He walked over to stand behind his desk, a lonely man with his back to the room as he stared out the window at his kingdom.

Leigh almost ran down the corridor to her bedchamber. Slamming the door behind her, she leaned against it, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Pushing herself away from the door, she went to her desk, opening the lid and searching through one of the small drawers for the small brass key to unlock the bottom drawer in the lower chest. For a moment, Leigh stood deep in thought, the rolled-up sketch balanced across her outspread palms, as if she were weighing its value.

The key clicked softly in the lock, and Leigh opened the drawer, carefully placing the drawing on top of Blythe’s muslin shawl, next to the
brisé
fan and neatly tied stack of letters, the drawer holding all of Blythe’s prized possessions—to be kept in trust for the daughter she would never know.

Leigh shut the drawer firmly, locking it. Placing the key back in the small drawer, she was about to close the lid of the desk, when her eye caught the gleam of the ornate silver frame that held the wedding portrait of Blythe and Adam. Leigh picked it up, her fingertip lightly tracing the curving line of the cold frame.

Blythe’s smiling face stared back at her. She had been a beautiful bride in white satin and lace, a chaplet of orange blossoms, for chastity and fertility, adorning the dainty, shoulder-length veil, her bridal bouquet fragrant with flowers from the gardens of Travers Hill, the blushing pink rose buds, drops of dew still clinging to the petals, lovingly selected by their mother the morning of the wedding. The toe of Blythe’s white satin slipper just peeked from beneath the lacy skirts of her gown, as if tapping with impatience for their images to be caught forever as the camera snapped. Leigh could still remember how long the photographer had taken in setting up his equipment, juggling thin metal plates, trays, and chemicals, his bald head popping up and down beneath the black cloth behind the tripod camera box, until finally there had been a bright flash that had sent Guy’s hounds howling from the great hall, the flustered photographer nearly falling in his haste as he tripped over the stragglers as he rushed to his wagon, where he’d set up his dark tent for developing the plates before they dried. The photographer had known his craft, however, for Adam appeared the perfect bridegroom, standing somewhat stiffly in his somber black tailcoat and trousers, his elegantly figured silver waistcoat, white shirt, tie, and gloves impeccable. His blond hair was neatly brushed, side whiskers trimmed close, but the devilish grin on his handsome face was anything but appropriate for the occasion, nor was the white satin drawstring purse over his arm proper dress for a gentleman on his wedding day, but then since Blythe held his top hat in her small gloved hand, Leigh supposed it did not seem unusual, and knowing both her sister and brother-in-law too well to have asked how the exchange had taken place, it still remained a mystery.