‘Yes, it was. Italy is on the Adriatic and Greece on the Aegean, or at least the bits of it we went to are, and oceans are vast, aren’t they? My papa sailed them from the time he was eight or nine, but I think I would be bored when it took so long to cross them. Mama says Papa was at sea for months on end.’
‘I have never sailed one myself, so I have no idea if the roll and thunder and all the strange sights sailors report make it seem worthwhile. You must ask my brother Wulf next time we meet, since he sailed the Atlantic twice over.’
Magnus’s little brother had made that impulsive and thankless journey to a new world to escape falling in love with Isabella, as if Wulf could escape loving the woman he was obviously born to love, Magnus thought scornfully. Then he felt uneasy because he might be doing exactly the same himself. It made him think about instincts and attractions even a strong man could not fight and Magnus didn’t have enough willpower to stop his gaze lingering on Hetta Champion’s svelte but curvaceous figure even with that tale of passion and pig-headed stubbornness in his head. She was outlined by the light breeze he was so glad of until it shaped her thin muslin gown and lawn summer petticoat so close to her body it was as if even the wind loved the feel of her body under its stroking caress.
His inner demon lingered appreciatively on the view of Hetta, As Outlined by Zephyr and wished he could paint again. A glowing renaissance nude with the luminous light and tender brushstrokes of a master like Titian, perhaps? No, that was far too much temptation to even think about with the model for it so near and her son watching the scene around him with eager eyes as he dried off in the sun. All the secrets of the earth seemed open to Toby’s wondering gaze right now and Magnus didn’t want him learning too much about how a grown man reacted to a very grown-up woman and he would if Magnus didn’t get a better grip on his baser impulses before they gave him away.
Hadn’t the kick of nausea in his belly when he recalled the hollow feeling of dread and misery the day he bid farewell to his daughter been enough to remind him what came of immoderate and unthinking desire? Even if Hetta wanted him in return, he couldn’t risk making another child who might grow up fatherless. And she showed no sign of being as tortured by longing for the ultimate release with him as he was for her. As well for both of them if she was immune to his so-called charms, then. They did enough harm with Delphi to last a lifetime of penitence and regret.
‘You will burn if you sit around in the sun for much longer, Tobias,’ he said and gestured towards the clothes the boy had thrown off on his way to the sea. ‘Don’t expect me to pick up after you. Your legs are younger and you stripped your clothes off as if you were being filleted on your way to the sea of your own accord.’
The boy laughed and Magnus felt a lesser version of that pang stab at his heart. He couldn’t afford to love this bright, wondering and sometimes too-trusting boy. It would do neither of them any good to let a bond grow, then break it when this journey was over and done with, so he frowned at the untidy array of boy’s clothes scattered about and turned his back on their owner as if he disapproved.
But turning round left him staring straight at Hetta as she laughed with his sister and sheltered her eyes with a raised hand to peer at something interesting on the horizon. It took him a while to wrench his gaze away from her to find out what she was watching. Ah, yes, a couple of seals were lying back in the water, looking as if they were lazily laughing. She was close enough now for him to see her mouth round in an ‘Ooh’ of wonder as the slick, sleek creatures almost seemed to wave back at them in the crystal clear, sun-warmed waters of this wild coast at such a languid hour of day.
Having seen seals dream before, he was more fascinated by Mrs Hetta Champion as nature intended her to be. Here in this wild land so far away from the controls and prejudices of the ton, she was relaxed and light-hearted as he would never have dreamed she could be that first day at Dover in those fearsome spectacles and a deplorable gown and shabby cloak. Now he could see the slender, eager girl she must have been when reckless and ambitious Brandon Champion courted her in secret like the rogue he was. Behind the strict-with-herself woman she became when her husband disappointed her, she was a warm and complicated siren. Or she would be if she ever felt the power of her femininity with the man who would truly show her how much he appreciated her in their bedchamber as he made love to his wife as often as he could for the rest of their lives.
No, he wasn’t marriage material. Nor was Champion, he reminded himself as a distraction from wanting her even more, if that was possible. Recalling the selfish, brash and ruthlessly charming lad he’d never liked half as well as his elder brother, he thought it very likely her husband bent the girl this woman was then out of shape. He had to admire her for keeping the girl alive under the guard she raised against the world when Champion failed her. The real Hetta was light-hearted and merry with her son in a way Magnus wished his own mother could have been with her children. He shivered despite the hot sun. No muffled giggle or moment of furtive humour with his mother and younger brother and sisters had gone unpunished by his late father if they dared have a life apart from him and he caught them at it.
Magnus tried to reassemble the uninterest he tried to feel for Hetta that first day at Dover, but it let him down. It was not uninterest even then. He had been bitter. No, that wasn’t right either. He had been more bitter than usual when a shabby young woman stepped forward to challenge him over her son. The light in those acute grey eyes of hers behind the ridiculous glasses hinted at depths well worth guarding from the likes of him as he verbally lashed out at her from the depths of his agony. An agony confused and burnt about the edges now he looked back. Fury at Delphi’s refusal to see sense had goaded him as much as love by the time he got to Dover but, whatever it was, it was toxic. Hetta’s love for her child seemed to show him all the things he could never have as he had bid farewell to his little girl. Delphi had been close to fainting at the very sight of him, now he’d served his purpose and had made the child she must have longed for all through her empty, self-inflicted marriage to Drace. Clearly Delphi still longed for Gresley even when he’d wed another woman for money. He wished she’d had the strength of mind Hetta did and had turned her back on a man so unworthy of her. Magnus snapped back to now and realised he must look so grim it was little wonder Toby had cast him a puzzled glance, then run off to find his mother.
‘Mama, Mama, it’s just like Greece, isn’t it? I swam with fishes and the water is almost warm and there are seals and Mr Haile says sometimes you can even see dolphins from here if you are very lucky. I love Cornwall—can we stay for ever?’
Magnus swallowed another dose of bile at the thought he should be teaching his own child to swim and bask in the English sun one day. He needed to cut himself off from the grieving father inside himself to stay sane. It was hard to live with this hollow at the heart of him, but he was weary of the constant ache of it, so goodness knew what the rest of the world thought of him. On such a day he contrasted a sun-bronzed, quicksilver boy with the hesitant shadow Delphi could easily make of their daughter. It wasn’t fair on Delphi to make the comparison, but he met his sister’s complicated brown and moss-green eyes and saw compassion and too much understanding looking back at him. He managed a rueful grin, to tell her he would get over his grief for his own child now he knew what it was. There would always be sadness for his child growing up puzzled and hesitant about her supposed-to-be-dead father, but it was time to stop wearing his woes like a badge and get on with life. And to get his hot, guilty and deeply covetous thoughts away from Mrs Henrietta Champion before he ruined another woman’s life with lust-driven need.
‘I doubt it’s quite this hot and lovely here all the year round, my darling,’ Hetta told her excited son, and her smile held such love Magnus felt his eyes threaten to water, so he looked away.
‘It isn’t,’ he said and, stiffening his sinews, even managed to turn and smile like a polite frie
nd. ‘I think it is still majestic in winter, when fog makes the whole place feel eerie and a little bit brooding, or the sea beats at the coast as if it wants to knock it down. I could live here with the thunder of the sea as a rough lullaby if only I could find work to keep me, but this is a hard land to live off, Toby, so I should scrub out any dreams of going out with the fishing boats or joining a smugglers’ gang if I were you. Your poor mama will take to lying on a sofa with a vinaigrette all day long if you so much as look as if you might do anything of the sort and quite right, too. Fishermen and smugglers are more or less the same around here and a tougher band of rogues you won’t find. The last thing they want aboard is a curious boy who can’t keep his eyes to himself or a still tongue in his head.’
‘I can,’ Toby argued, looking injured. His mother raised her eyebrows and challenged that assertion. Toby kept up the act of misunderstood angel for a while, then shrugged and grinned. ‘I can’t, can I? But I so badly want to know things that I can’t help asking questions.’
‘And I want you safe while you find out, my Toby. Then perhaps you can be my older and wiser son who finds a way to live here one day. You can look after your white-haired mother when I am in my dotage and nobody else wants me.’
Toby looked back with mischief dancing in his blue eyes that were so like his father’s surely even Brandon Champion would have found enough room in his heart for his son if he had lived long enough to meet him.
‘Don’t tell me you won’t do it, Tobias, my love. I might decide it’s high time we moved on and I should tear you away from this fine beach and Mr Haile in order to do some packing if you refuse to look after me one day as I have you for all these weary years,’ she teased her son.
Magnus almost laughed because she looked like a girl herself today and far too young to have a seven-year-old son. She had let the mischievous breeze tease through her loosened hair and vitality seemed to shine off both Champions as they took in the wonder of this world beyond the world.
‘You won’t, though. You love it here, too, Mama.’
‘I do, but I won’t if you stow away on a fishing boat or sneak out at night to secrete yourself aboard for a smuggling run.’
‘Mr Haile says they don’t do it much since the Great War ended. It wouldn’t be half as much fun as when duties were so high they hid goods in the church and ran cargoes in under the Revenue cutters’ noses either.’
Magnus felt his heart swell at the very idea he could have all this for himself, if he was idealistic or good enough to plunge head first into Mrs Hetta Champion’s unusual life and convince her they were fated to live together for life. She felt like his guilty hope—this girl-woman and her beloved boy. He couldn’t allow himself to truly feel the tug of such a dream, so he distracted himself from the yearning that shook him by holding his hand out for his sister Aline’s sketchbook with a brotherly grin of invitation.
‘No, Magnus, I need to work them up before they are fit to be seen. You know how I hate anyone else seeing my work until it’s in a far more finished state.’
‘I know you hate anyone to see it, full stop, since it has never been deemed good enough to be viewed at all.’
‘Then pay me the courtesy of not expecting to see them until and unless I am satisfied they are ready to be seen.’
‘No, I am your brother—I have a right to be obnoxious for your own good. It’s what I was born for,’ he argued and snatched the book from her slack hold before she could whisk it behind her back and refuse to display her work yet again.
‘There are times, Master Tobias Champion, when it is not as wonderful to have brothers and sisters and be an adult as you believe,’ Aline told Toby as if he was the only person on this beach she could speak to at the moment. Hetta was holding her hand out for the sketchbook when Magnus had finished looking at it and Aline probably couldn’t even begin to say what she really wanted to in front of a relatively innocent boy.
‘Why not?’ Toby demanded with a frown to say she should try being seven and three-quarters and this short and on his own.
‘Because you cannot do as instinct dictates and thump your brother hard in the stomach, then reclaim your property while he is lying groaning at your feet.’
‘I suppose not,’ he said with a regretful glance from Aline to said brother as if he’d like to see it done.
Magnus sent his sister a superior look to argue it was unlikely, since he was far more muscular and wary than he was last time she’d tried it. Then he truly looked at the fine watercolour sketches in the book his sister usually managed to close when anyone was close enough to be curious about it. ‘These are superb, Ally. Why on earth do you insist on keeping them to yourself?’
‘Any competent drawing master would tear them to pieces.’
‘Nonsense. I always knew you could draw, but now I can see you have true talent for it as well as watercolour painting. These colour washes are exquisite and the sea creatures look as if they were just this minute plucked from the sea. As for this study of our young man here bending over his net to trawl some unsuspecting rock pool, I defy anyone else to catch his absolute concentration half as well as you have.’
‘You do get so intent when something fascinates you,’ Aline explained to Toby as if she should apologise for drawing him so truly his vibrant energy seemed to come off the page.
‘Can I see?’ Hetta asked with a politely long-suffering look Magnus didn’t believe in any more than her discarded glasses.
She was a very determined lady, Mrs Henrietta Champion. He suspected she got her way more often than not, even if her son and father did manage to frustrate her before she had time to summon her best arguments. He flicked through the remaining pages Aline had filled with such skill and energy he marvelled that he’d never noticed how good she was until now and passed it on with an almost apologetic look at his sister. This must be how she coped with a life so limited by poverty and scandal until their father died. He should have known about her secret life and all the energy and hope she put on paper when there seemed to be so little room for it in her everyday life. Somehow, he hadn’t even noticed a hint of such refined skill and talent until now, so he had been wilfully blind about her as well as the woman he once thought he loved.
Remember that resolution you made to pull yourself together, Magnus Haile, and don’t put on another hair shirt until you’ve washed the last one and handed it back to its real owner.
It was hard work not hating himself for neglecting his little sisters while he lived the idle life of a half-hearted dandy about town once he came down from Oxford. He had danced and boxed and enjoyed being the spare and not the heir, with the odd fantasy about Delphi being free and realising what a fine lover he would make to enliven his useless existence. He should have realised how badly the scandal the old man made up about their mother had hit his sisters’ prospects. And why did the old devil do it? Was it because the old Earl sensed his wife had stopped loving him, if she ever had? Or did he find out she loved a younger, better man, even if she refused to break her marriage vows? Who knew what went on in the old man’s head? Magnus was very glad not to know because if he didn’t understand he couldn’t be like him, could he?
‘What about me?’ Toby demanded, glaring up at the neat little sketchbook his mother was so deeply absorbed in when he could only see the plain covers and had no hope of looking over her shoulder.
Hetta gave Aline a questioning look as if to ask permission to lower herself to her son’s height and show him. Wise not to trust him with the book, given his usual impatience with finding out about the next item on his list, but when Aline nodded resigned agreement the lad was so open-mouthed with awe at the paintings in front of him Magnus took his opinion back. Toby had the making of a true observer of wonders and his usual brash curiosity masked a true respect for the extraordinary and wonderful.
‘Will you teach me?’ the boy said breathily as he star
ed at the image of a piece of seaweed and some driftwood with the slick sea still shiny on it as the tide went out.
‘Hmm, maybe one day. For all your quickness at other things I have yet to see any sign of great talent in your drawing, young man.’
‘I never knew paint could do this,’ he explained earnestly. ‘Mama and Grandpapa took me to see some fusty old paintings in Florence and Paris, but that was all saints and martyrs and silly-looking women with no clothes on.’
Magnus couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter at Toby’s scathing description of some of the finest paintings the world had ever seen, if excited reports of fabulous collections of old masters in both cities were even close to the truth. ‘Please promise me you will never aspire to be a diplomat or politician, Toby,’ he managed to say as soon as he could get a word out without recalling the expression on the boy’s face at his revolted description of them.
‘Why would I want to be either?’
‘I can see no reason at all, or why anyone would expect such feats of self-restraint, my son,’ his mother said with a smile that lit sparks of gold and turquoise at the heart of her grey irises. Magnus wished she wouldn’t do that. It made her gaze all the more fascinating without the disfiguring glasses even she seemed to realise weren’t doing their job and were getting between her and this beautiful country.
The genuine warmth under all those layers of armour and her joy in her extraordinary son made Hetta Champion look the very opposite of the woman he first took her for. She was so close to being beautiful in a light muslin gown thankfully devoid of the ruffles and half the petticoats designed to bell the skirts out now fashion said ladies could almost have waists again. Nowadays he preferred simplicity and her natural good taste to the extremes of fashion. On the way here, her disguises seemed to have peeled away layer by layer in the warmth of high summer.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 14