by Sophia James
Limping outside, Daniel sat by the front door on a chair Amethyst had placed there, the herbs from the kitchen garden pungent. He was relieved to be away from the bed.
‘Nigel and I used to play here when we were young. Julia would bring us treats from the kitchen.’
‘She is a good woman.’
He nodded.
‘My father is most enamoured of her.’
Daniel smiled and for a moment they stayed quiet, nothing between them but silence, though his mind raced with all the other questions he needed answers for now that he felt stronger.
‘Did Whitely ever hurt you, Amethyst?’
Even at a distance he could tell that she stiffened. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Lucien said the man had a reputation for striking out with his fists in the heady dens of London’s most expensive brothels.’
She breathed out hard before answering. ‘He had a sickness, I think, that he could not control.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ The anger in his voice was obvious, but even with effort he failed to soften it.
‘He was a man prone to high emotion that he had no way of controlling, you understand, and on top of that he liked to drink. More and more as our marriage progressed and he realised that our union had been a terrible mistake. It was probably my fault, too, because by that time I knew I could not abide him anywhere near me and I said so. The night-times were the worst because he was not able to...’ She stopped and took a deep breath, reasoning Daniel would hardly wish to hear about their more intimate problems. ‘He lashed out with words at first and then with his fists. A month after our nuptials he lost control and punched me in the stomach, as hard as he could. He told me that he could ruin my father’s reputation completely with some of the things he knew and I believed him.’
‘What happened next?’
‘I was sick all over his boots.’
‘God.’
‘So he left and did not come back again for nearly a fortnight afterwards. By then I had arranged a tutor in the art of self-defence, using the same knife that you saw me with the other day. He never touched me again.’
‘Never?’
‘He had discovered other women who were more than pleased to accommodate him. He had our money behind him and was in the process of setting up his own dubious business schemes, which we knew nothing of until it was too late. Besides, I was more in the way than anything and he made certain to tell me I was ugly every time he saw me.’ She took a deep breath and went on. ‘I have a birthmark on the top of my left thigh, the kiss of the fairies my mother used to tell me it was, but to Gerald it was the stamp of the devil.’
‘And to you...what is it to you?’
She turned away, but not before he had seen her tears. ‘It was my shame.’
The shame of her own feebleness and paralysis. The shame of allowing another governance over sense and strength. The shame of not telling her father all that was happening and yet failing to deal with it well by herself.
She could tell Daniel wanted to say something by the anger that flicked across his brow, but he didn’t. Rather he took her hand in his and they sat there, just the two of them, her perched on the top step and him on the dainty inside chair, watching the sky and the stars and the large full moon above them.
Finally he spoke. ‘Marks on the body show the journey of life, Amethyst. Were we to survive every year unblemished I doubt we would have truly lived.’
He lifted the sleeve of his nightgown and she saw the same wound she had once before noticed, this time uncovered. ‘It is not pretty, I know, but if I touch this I think of how lucky I was to survive.’
‘What happened?’
‘My brother pushed me into a grain machine when I was nine.’ He smiled then, his white teeth easy to see in the moonlight. ‘Nigel got the fright of his life, but the scar turned out to be a godsend. Every time he played roughly after that I made sure he got a glimpse of it and he usually stopped.’
His thumb stroked her wrist and he looked across at her. ‘This is the same sort of badge. You prefer carriages moving at the slowest of paces and who can blame you for that? Look at Whitely as another lesson, but know that one foolish marriage doesn’t mean you have made another.’
She couldn’t help but frown at his logic. ‘But I did not decide to marry you for any other reason than to make my father happy in the last months of his life. A reason that was foolish to the extreme in any way you might look at it.’
‘Then it’s lucky I am nothing like your first husband...’ he returned and laughed out loud, the sound ringing in the empty chambers of her heart and filling them with gladness.
My goodness, how she loved him. She wanted to say it out here with the night-time masking her shyness, but she couldn’t. He was still weak from all he had been through and he needed to be back in bed. Besides, if he did not feel what she did everything would change and she could not risk such disappointment. Better to leave it as it was, the hope of something, the taste of possibility. When he recovered there would be plenty of time to talk.
* * *
He awoke to her there in the morning curled upon the bed beside him and for the first time in days his body seemed free of heat and sickness. She lay in a full day gown on top of the counterpane, a pillow carefully positioned between them. Her hair was loose from the band she wore and the curls jostled wildly in short lengths of gold and blonde.
Beautiful. More beautiful than any other woman he had ever known, inside and out.
The revelation was startling. He had not married an ingénue who would take fright at things out of the ordinary. He had not married a society princess either, with a constant want for the very best and the most expensive. Amethyst Amelia was brave and true and real, a woman who would walk by his side and watch over him as he would her. A partner. A friend. A lover, too, if he could ever get his strength back.
Gerald Whitely by her own admission had been a brute of a husband. The stakes had heightened. He needed to woo his unusual bride and court her and make her understand that without him life was...unliveable. He smiled at such melodrama, but inside he knew he had finally met the woman who completed him and so very unexpectedly.
Firstly, however, he needed to get better.
* * *
‘You are certain you do not need my help?’ She finished fussing with the things on his bedside table just to make sure that he had all he needed and close by.
He had moved back into his room at Montcliffe this morning and much to his surprise Robert Cameron had hired a good many extra hands from London to make certain that he was well cared for.
‘No, all is in order, Amethyst,’ he said from his place in the wingchair by the fire. He had dressed this morning in his own clothes and his hair had been trimmed.
‘You can do something for me before you go, however. Could you send your father to see me?’
‘Now?’
‘If it is possible.’
‘Of course.’
Daniel saw the puzzlement and question in her eyes, though she said nothing as she gave him her goodnight and let herself out of his chamber.
The formality between them since leaving the annexe broke his heart, but there were things he needed to do first to make this marriage right. For her sake and for his.
Robert arrived a few moments later. He looked far healthier than he had in London, and happier. The influence of Julia McBeth, Daniel supposed, and gestured for his father-in-law to take a seat near him by the fire.
‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’
‘Amethyst said it was important.’
‘It is, although I did not enlighten her as to what it was I needed to say to you.’
‘I see.’ A heavy frown covered the brow of the other and he fidgeted with a handkerchief he took from his pocket
.
‘Can I offer you a drink?
‘No, thank you, my lord. The hour is late and I would not sleep well if—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I am an old man now, Lord Montcliffe, and age leads me to say things that I could not have as a youngster.’ He took breath. ‘My daughter is a good honest woman and if you think she is not quite the wife you want I would urge you to give it more time because—’
He didn’t finish because Daniel interrupted him.
‘I want to ask for Amethyst’s hand in marriage, Mr Cameron, but properly this time.’
Astonishment made the other’s eyes wider. ‘But you are already married, my lord.’
‘I need the conditions and amendments gone. No limits anywhere. A true marriage.’
Robert suddenly seemed to get the gist of what he was asking, for his cheeks reddened with emotion. ‘You want for ever?’
‘I do.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Then I would be most honoured to revoke any conditions and give you my wholehearted blessing.’ With intent, he thrust out his hand and the Earl took it. A handshake to nullify convenience. ‘I have dreamed of this, of course, and hoped it might come to pass, for Amy has been happier here than I have ever seen her.’
‘Then that brings me to another matter altogether.’ Daniel’s voice was measured. ‘That of Gerald Whitely.’
Robert paled at the name.
‘I am surprised that as a doting father you did not realise the man’s true nature and deal with him.’
‘True nature?’
‘On Amethyst’s own admission he hurt her physically. Then he proceeded to break down any belief in herself.’
‘I know.’
‘Pardon?’ The anger in the word was harsh.
‘I made it my business to find out all that I could about Whitely after Amy married him, Lord Montcliffe. A friend of mine had sent him to me with a high recommendation, but as a father I could see how unhappy he was making her. The discoveries I made were not comforting. Each fact I found out seemed worse than the last one, for he had confounded us into believing he was something he most definitely wasn’t.’
‘Which was a fraudster with violent tendencies?’
‘I see you, too, have done your homework. But he was all that and worse. It was he who tried to murder us in the carriage accident on the way to Leicester. If we were both to die, all the Cameron money would be in his hands and since niceties between us had long since broken down I could not trust that he wouldn’t try it again when we survived. I had him followed one night in London by a chap called Black John Lionel who was known in the docklands as a fixer, a man who might scare others off their chosen course of action, you understand.
‘He found Whitely alone in a brothel he frequented in Grey Street with two shots through the head. A youngish gentleman had pushed past him in a hurry to leave as he had walked up the stairs and he imagined that the man was the one who had dispatched Whitely a few moments earlier. When Lionel came back to Grosvenor Square and reported what he had found out I paid him some more to be quiet about it and Amethyst stayed safe. The constabulary never made an arrest for the crime, but I did not want our family pulled through a long and gruelling investigation. Whitely had damaged us enough already.’
Daniel could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Does anyone else know of this?’
‘Black John Lionel, of course, but other than him, no one save the fellow who killed Whitely, I suppose, but he would hardly be speaking. I can tell you, though, that I hold absolutely no regrets for keeping quiet...’
‘Good. I’d have done the same.’
‘You would?’
He nodded. ‘Without compunction, though I’d have probably shot him myself.’
Robert smiled, but sadness marked his eyes. ‘Amy thinks it was the men from the docklands demanding money who tampered with the carriage. I let her believe that because it was easier than the truth and I even encouraged it. From the moment she found out Whitely was dead she began to live again. She knows nothing at all about my involvement with Black John Lionel and I sincerely hope that she never will. I haven’t many months to live, so if you could find it in yourself to put my shocking confession aside until then I would be most grateful.’
Pouring out a large brandy, Daniel saw Robert’s hand was shaking as he took it. ‘In life there are things that have to be done.’
‘Thank you.’ The older man smiled, relief making him talk. ‘It was my fault Amy ever met Whitely right from the beginning when he came to me as a clerk. At first he lived up to the promise of being meticulous and scrupulous, but it was not long before I began to think things were not as they should have been. His work began to suffer and then he made it his business to court Amethyst with all the stealth of a man who could see the acquisition of an easy fortune. There was no love in him, but he was clever in his concealing of it. When I understood that this was going to lead exactly where I didn’t want it to go I offered him passage to the Americas and money to set up there as long as he never came within a hundred miles of us again. He married my daughter a week later. A week after that he stole the first thousand pounds and began his schemes to fleece the gentlemen of the ton out of their hard-earned cash.’
‘Did Amethyst know what he was doing?’
‘She was clever enough to recognise that the books were not adding up and that his “work” was dragging money out of our accounts. She got sadder daily and more removed from living and he had made it his mission by then to make certain she knew what he thought of her.’
‘She didn’t fight back?’
He shook his head. ‘He was blackmailing me at that time and he had reason. I’d unwittingly taken up a contract that was a suspect cargo and it turned out to be stolen goods. On hindsight I think he also used the information to keep Amethyst biddable and she was trying to protect my reputation by remaining so. That is the worst of it.’
‘My God. The bastard deserved a far slower death than the one he got, but after tonight we forget it. Move on and live.’
‘I agree. There is one thing I would like to ask of you, though. In the light of what I have told you, would you be averse to me buying land in the area? I have seen a house not too far from here that I like the look of, though of course I would understand it if you felt uncertain about my presence here.’
‘I have no reservations whatsoever and I know Amethyst will be pleased with the news.’
If Robert lived in Barnet, then Amethyst would want to stay at Montcliffe. To be back here for good was something Daniel had not expected, but the thought of his children here and their children marching down through the ages made a wonderful sense. He knew this place, these hills, the sound of the land and the timings of the seasons. He understood the cottars and the farm cycles and the birdsong and the plants in the wood. He had run free here for years of his life with his brother beside him and he had loved it. The realisation that Montcliffe Manor had always been in his blood whether he had known it or not gave him a new sense of belonging.
The man opposite was also a part of that. A friend, a confidant, a father who had taken the brave step of protecting his daughter in the only way he knew how.
‘Before we left London, Robert, I had it put around in the docklands that I would not countenance any more attacks on Cameron personage or property. I have employed a couple of old soldiers that I trust to make certain that those who assaulted you near Hyde Park Corner will never threaten you again.’
‘Then that has ended, too, and all we have now are new beginnings.’ The lines of worry on Robert’s face looked softer. ‘I think my Susannah must be looking down on me to have made all this possible. Amethyst is very like her, you know. Loyal and fierce. Julia is the same.’
Lifting his glass of brandy Daniel offered up a toast. ‘To our women then. May they long keep us safe.’
* * *
Her husband knocked at the door that was shared between the rooms as she sat at the dressing table in her night rail, brushing out the short length of her curls. Pulling on a wrap, she moved to turn the key placed on her side of the lock. When the portal opened Daniel stood dressed down in his breeches and an open shirt. He wore no cravat at all.
‘Could we talk, Amethyst? In my chamber?’
‘Of course.’ She noticed he reached for the key and transferred it to his side of the door as they passed through.
The four-poster bed wrapped in dark brocade drew her eyes in a way it had not done earlier and she looked away quickly.
‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘I am not sure...’
‘Just a little one? For bravery.’
The word brought a smile to her lips. ‘Are you implying I might need it, my lord.’
He moved forward and took her hand in his own. ‘Undoubtedly. But then, so will I, my lady, and in equal measure.’
Tonight he seemed different, lighter, less intimidating.
‘I am starting to remember more from when I was sick.’ He looked at her directly now, the green in his eyes full of question. ‘And I am beginning to understand the meaning of some of the things you told me.’
I love you.
She had shouted it at him more than once when she had thought he might not live.
‘I remember you saying something about for ever as you urged me to fight. Without you I might have given up and let the darkness claim me, but you shook me awake and gave me your words. So now my question is this: is our marriage only one of convenience, Amethyst, or could we find more within it?’
Not the proclamation she had hoped for and dressed in a lacy nightgown with a large bed a few feet away the language of lust must be taken into account. How much more did he want from her? She swallowed. With only a mention of love she would allow him everything.