by Lisa Chaplin
Barton Lynch, Norfolk
March 15, 1803
“She still hasn’t spoken?”
Duncan shook his head. “Not a word.”
With whitened hair and eyes dark ringed with sadness and fatigue, for the first time Eddie looked the sixty-one years he was. “Caroline wouldn’t forgive me for not writing to Lizzy. She didn’t understand the importance of the mission . . .”
Duncan shrugged. Eddie never listened to things he didn’t want to hear. But then, had he? She’d warned him . . .
“Try again,” his father-in-law snapped, but the suffering in his eyes took away any sting in the words. “Make her see sense.”
“What sense?” Duncan heard the weariness in his voice. “That the mission was more important than if she saw her mother again?”
Eddie’s jaw tightened. “Don’t support her in this ridiculous vengeance—”
“She’s grieving. Who else does she have to blame but us? You blamed her when we arrived, said she ought to have come earlier. You knew what we were doing!”
Eddie looked startled, and Duncan realized he’d never treated his mentor with such contempt. The older man said, “You could have brought her home.”
“You could have come for her a year ago. And don’t say fear of Delacorte prevented you. He couldn’t stop us for long once we knew the marriage was illegal. All you had to do was approach Boney through legal means. You didn’t. You never once wrote to her when you knew where she was. You didn’t ask her to come home. It would have meant the world to her.”
He heard Eddie’s teeth grinding.
“I’ve tried to comfort her,” Duncan said quietly. Every day he had to bring her home from her mother’s grave, shivering, coughing. Night after night he found her curled in the large wing chair in Caroline’s sitting room, her salt-streaked face telling him she’d cried herself to sleep. Though she took the medicines he pushed on her, and let him lead her to bed, her look of fury warned him to find another room to sleep in. “Why don’t you try?”
“What do I say? We’ve all made sacrifices in the game—”
Without warning, Duncan lost control. “Lisbeth was never in the game. She was illegally wed, her baby stolen from her, dumped in a town of strangers who despised her. She didn’t agree to the mission; she desperately clutched at her only way to get home, only to get here too late.” He stood over Eddie, for the first time realizing how much taller he was. “She’s nineteen, for God’s sake, and she’s your daughter. All she knows is her mother died, and we betrayed her trust.”
Eddie sagged. “I’ve tried to talk to her. Leo and Andrew took turns speaking to her. But she won’t even look at us. Something must be done.”
Goaded by the way he spoke, Duncan snapped, “She’s not a mission, Eddie. She’s hurting, and she needs time to forgive us.” But he didn’t know if she could, or would. “Apart from having Edmond, all she talked about in quiet moments together was seeing Caroline again.”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” Eddie snapped, “Talk to her, Duncan! She can’t keep ignoring us this way.”
“Why is that? Is it only acceptable when you do it?”
Before they’d even turned to the door of the library, Lisbeth was inside. Dressed in a gown of deepest mourning, her hair pulled up in a severe chignon by her mother’s maid, she stared her father down, not with fury, but with haunting sorrow. “I’m sorry, Sir Edward. I don’t know how to comfort you. I don’t know who you are.”
“What did you call me?” After taking a few moments to gather his wits, Eddie said with obvious wariness, “I’m your father.”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I don’t know you. I never knew you.”
Eddie flinched and threw Duncan a helpless look.
“You wanted her to speak.” Coolly, Duncan moved beside his wife, showing her where his loyalties lay—but she stiffened beside him. He’d give anything to turn back the clock a week, a month, and tell her everything.
“You shouldn’t speak like that to me,” Eddie faltered at last.
Lisbeth lifted her fingers in a tiny, sad shrug. “Is that all you can say? Shouldn’t and don’t, and you ought to have taken to me with a birch switch? Would it have made me more the daughter you wanted?”
Eddie drew himself up and focused on the one deflection he could make. “Are you saying I should blame myself for your mistakes? If you’d obeyed me, your father—”
“I remember when I was about eight, I asked Mama who you were. Papa was just a word. Every time you left I used to wish you’d never come back. It always hurt her so.”
Eddie’s gaze lowered. “Talk to your brothers if you need to blame me. They need you.”
“What should I say to them?” Said without rancor: the power of her words enough to flay, gentle cat-o’-nine-tails. “When I went to Jeremiah the blacksmith’s wife’s funeral, I knew what to say to him, because he was my friend. I barely know your sons, sir.”
“Well, get to know them. Duncan knows them well.”
She closed her eyes. “Of course he does.” A river of disillusion in that pitiful little laugh.
After the longest minute of his life, Duncan saw Eddie soften, but it was like the wax of a candle, bent out of shape by callous fingers. “You felt neglected. I see that now, but you don’t understand. The terror that the Revolution would come to Britain—that everyone I loved would die horribly—I had to make sacrifices, risk my life. Then Bonaparte—”
“I don’t understand sacrifice.” She pointed to her scarred cheek, and something in her look chilled Duncan right through. “I have three of these, sir. I nearly died twice.” She turned to him, and Duncan waited in silence for the attack. “Is what I did so trivial that you haven’t even reported it to your superior officers?”
A slow-moving tide of sadness, loss—bewildered disillusionment—it was all in her eyes. What the hell was he supposed to say? “I didn’t want to leave you—”
Her lifted hand stopped him, the pain in her face. “Please, no more lies. Stop pretending you care. You have everything you wanted—you’ve won. You’re a Sunderland. At least give me the respect of honesty in return.” She pressed her lips together to stop the tears, but they had their way, along with pathetic, noisy little gulps. The men waited in wretched silence. “When Cal and Alec bring my son, I’m going with them to Scotland. Their family sounds nice.” After a moment she added, “I thought I was too ruined to have Edmond—but I can’t leave him here. Not without Mama.”
Long moments passed, marked by the ticking of the grandfather clock and the birds tweeting outside. It was obvious Lisbeth had said her piece. “You’re certain the Stewarts will bring your child?” Eddie asked, without a bite of mockery.
Lisbeth’s smile was a ghost of her normal sweetness and life. The blind distance was back, familiar enemy. “I’ve only known them a few months, but Cal has been risking his life for months to save Edmond. Alec did everything to help Duncan, while he made Alec jump through hoops to prove himself worthy.” She glanced at Duncan. “You never need doubt his loyalty to you, Sir Edward. Duncan even said he loved me so I’d fulfill the objective. I congratulate you on your creation. He’s just like you.”
Duncan felt sick. All this time he’d bargained on her forgiving him, loving him against all odds. He’d never been more wrong. Long-instilled training in silence when others spoke was a habit now, but he forced words out. “I do love you. I always have.”
She closed her eyes again. “Then God save me from your anger or vengeance.” She spoke to her father. “Cal and Alec will bring Edmond to me. They’re the brothers I never had.”
“Lizzy,” Leo whispered, taking a faltering step forward.
The grief in Leo’s voice made her swing around. She paled at the sight of her brothers’ devastated faces. “I’m sorry.” That same shaking little shrug. “I don’t know what you want from me. I only came home for Mama, and she’s gone.” Her glance turned to Duncan, hopeless, lost. “Enjoy be
ing a Sunderland.” She lifted her black skirts, moved past her brothers with quiet dignity, and walked outside.
Eddie looked at Duncan, with the same unspoken plea as a year and a half ago. “How many times do I have to bring your daughter home?” Duncan asked, low. “When will you show her you care for her, or tell her you were wrong?”
Eddie fell into a chair behind him and covered his face with his hands.
Barely able to stand seeing the feet of clay Lisbeth had always known were there, Duncan said, “Then you really have lost her.” Sickened, he looked at her brothers, who shrugged helplessly.
He spent the rest of the day at Caroline’s grave standing fifty feet from his wife, her unwanted sentinel.
CHAPTER 53
HER FATHER WAS GONE by the time Lisbeth woke up the next morning.
Leo and Andrew at least had waited to say farewell, but they’d been so stiff and cold she wished they’d sneaked off as well. Their coaches had barely disappeared beyond the gates before she turned on Duncan. “When are you leaving?”
He regarded her with eyes gentle with compassion. “I’m staying.”
“Please don’t.” Her knees were shaking. Half afraid she’d fall down, she turned away, walked in the house, and up the stairs.
Duncan followed her to her mother’s sitting room, her mother’s chair. Saying nothing, not even always looking at her. Just there.
“When are you leaving?” she repeated.
With difficulty he knelt at her feet, balancing awkwardly with the broken shoulder. “I gave you my word. I’m not going anywhere, no matter how you push me away.”
“What if I want you to go?” she demanded, low and quivering.
The growl that shivered into her soul from the first time he’d spoken to her was still quiet and gentle. “I understand now. We stand on the same side of the mirror. If I don’t know women, men are strangers to you. You believe all the men in your life will leave you—your father, your brothers, Alain, me. Even Edmond left you.”
His damaged warrior’s face rocked back with the force of her slap. “My baby is innocent!” Her hand stung and burned.
He remained at her feet, his cheek red with the imprint of her blow. “That’s it, love. Hit me, hate me, I deserve you to.”
In his words, she saw herself through a new, horrified set of eyes. She dragged in a breath and looked at her hand as if it had betrayed her. “No. I won’t hit you, not ever again. I won’t be like them.”
But he wouldn’t give up. “Edmond couldn’t help leaving you—but it’s what you’re afraid of, aren’t you? That he’ll become like your father, like me, and leave you to save the world, the nation, or someone else. That’s why you made me swear not to train him.”
She fought the childish urge to cover her ears. “Stop it.”
From his kneeling position he looked up at her. Just as in her romantic novels, a knight vowing fidelity to his lady. The irony of it was almost ridiculous. She’d have believed it only a week ago. “Every man you’ve ever loved has left you. So you’re pushing me until I go.”
“No, I’m not.” She looked in his eyes and saw his fear, a reflection of her suffering. He did understand. “You can’t make this right. You didn’t tell me about Mama, and it makes all your vows worth nothing. The only man who ever loved me, who never let me down, was Robert.” She stared out the window, unblinking in the weak sunlight, silvery scudding cloud. “I chose the wrong man.”
He kept his gaze on hers, the shutters into his turbulent soul fully open. Too late. A week, a lifetime of choices too late. “I’m sorry.”
“I loved you,” she whispered. “I thought I’d finally found a man to believe in.”
After a few moments, he said unsteadily, “I’m still not leaving. You promised to teach me to be a family man. You’re teaching me now not to walk away when life gets hard. I don’t care if it takes a lifetime, I’m never leaving you.”
His declaration only brought stinging tears. Lies, all lies.
He remained on his knees before her. When she finally stopped crying, he said, “All my life I’ve been taught to obey, to put duty above everything—as a child, a King’s Man, in my short stint in the navy. With your father. Duty was the highest calling of man. It was only when we came here that I realized the real cost, the true sacrifice.”
It sounded like something her brother Andrew had once said to her, and most likely he’d taken it from their father. “My father told you to say that. Say something to make me pity you, and I’ll forgive you. I’m not my mother.”
This time he remained still. The silence was almost hopeless. “So that was wrong, too?”
A helpless shrug. “I don’t know if anything could be right.”
After a minute of unspoken acceptance of her accusations, he said quietly, “You’ll remember me telling you that the only thing I knew nothing about was women? If you’ll—”
With remembered nausea at his story, she could only look at him with bleary eyes. “You won’t leave me in peace until you’ve had your say. I’ve lost the only person who ever loved me, and you still push for what you want.”
The tired pain in his expression, and she knew what he was going to say. “Lizzy, please believe that—”
“I don’t.” She kept her voice down. Back in England, keeping up appearances for the servants. Accepting what wouldn’t change. “The girl you married died last week. As my father created you, this is what you made me. Now live with it. God knows I have to.”
He whitened, got to his feet, and backed away. “Alec wrote to me today. He said Cal’s had trouble leaving the continent with Boney’s soldiers everywhere. He’s made it as far as Amsterdam. Alec is sailing to Holland to get them. They’ll be here in two weeks. If you want my house in Frampton Lacey for you and Edmond—”
She shook her head. “Grand-mère left me her house in the Cotswolds. I’ll go there if the Stewarts won’t have me.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. How could he answer that? His own family was as unfamiliar to him as they were to her. “You’ll have my best carriage, a generous quarterly allowance, and a full contingent of staff. If there’s ever anything else you need, write to me.”
Her hand crossed her brow, covering her eyes. “For God’s sake, Duncan, give me a little peace—please.”
Ten seconds of silence. “If you need me, I’ll be in the study.” He bowed over her hand and quit the room without another word.
Barton Lynch, Norfolk
April 10, 1803
The uncertainty of cold, windy spring finally gave way to warmer days, but Lisbeth was like the half-frozen nights that followed. Sitting by a fire didn’t melt the ice in her. It walled around her, and nothing she did warmed her up or broke her out of this prison.
She walked the gardens in the watery sunshine. It grew a bit warmer each day, but the breeze was cool and playful, loosening the careful chignon. Her skin itched and sweated beneath her heavy black dress, but at least she felt something other than this awful numbness.
Duncan, still at his post half a garden length from her. Watching.
Irritation swelled up in her; but at least she felt something other than the bitterness of his betrayal. He did nothing but give to her, but it was weeks, months too late. He was putting her first at last, but it was all aimed at gaining forgiveness. Perversely, she couldn’t blame him for that. He was so alone, and she was so tired of fighting, of pushing him off. If . . . if she gave into her shameful craving and allowed him back into her bed—
Then I’d be the thing I despised. Hasn’t Duncan been used enough by selfish women?
Nobody had ever told her grief was such a stupid thing, turning her into a total lackwit.
A cloud scudded across the washed-out blue of the sky. A bird cawed. Rumbling slowly came to her ears, the wheels of a coach. Lisbeth held her breath as she did every day, waiting until the sound passed, leaving her in the same disappointment she’d felt for the past three days.
&
nbsp; The sound slowed, the carriage trundling over stones as it turned into the gates. The gatekeeper let it in, and it began the long drive up. Lisbeth had to stop herself from running. If it was another condolence call by curious neighbors, she’d—
A face appeared at the window of the big, brand-new carriage with the Annersley crest on it. A face with hard features, black eyes and hair, and a smile as wide as the sea. Alec met her agonized gaze and nodded.
She almost fell to her knees. Now beside her, Duncan put his good arm around her waist and led her to the coach.
The driver let down the stairs. Alec alighted, his smile blazing, holding a blanket-clad bundle in his arms. “I think you’ve met this little lad before.” And he handed the baby to her.
Edmond was asleep. The warmth of the blanket, the sight of satin skin, the dreaming crooked smile . . . for the first time in months, her son was in her arms. So much bigger; so much she’d missed. He made a soft baby noise, opening his mouth. He had teeth.
Vaguely she saw another form coming down the coach stairs. Absorbed in her son, she knew it was Cal by the endless silent grief emanating from him. Thank you, she mouthed, and saw the strange, hurting half smile that was uniquely Cal. He was limping.
A young woman emerged, holding another child. Edmond’s wet nurse, she assumed.
Then another face appeared. Thin, hollow eyed, with frizzled gray hair. Marceline’s gaze met hers, asking the question.
How could she do less for Marceline than she’d had done for her in Eaucourt, and at far more risk? Lisbeth nodded. Her son’s grandmother left the coach on Cal’s hand. Trembling fingers touched Edmond’s hair. “Merci,” was all she said—but Lisbeth knew her gratitude would turn to hatred if Marceline discovered it was she who’d killed her son.
CHAPTER 54
Barton Lynch, Norfolk
April 14, 1803
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BOY.” Sitting on the floor in her old nursery, Lisbeth cooed in her son’s face, making the baby giggle and bounce in her lap. She’d discovered he liked it when she said “boo-ful,” and said it at every opportunity.