‘Have you ever caught a frog?’ Alastair whispered.
The boy’s eyes widened. ‘No. Can you show me how?’
‘You have to be quick. Watch.’
Stealthily Alastair approached, careful not to let his shadow fall over the pool. After choosing his target, he crouched down, and with a quick lightning thrust, snatched up the unsuspecting amphibian.
The frog squirmed and wiggled, trying to escape Alastair’s grasp. ‘Do you want to hold it?’ he asked the boy.
‘Oh, yes!’ James breathed.
Alastair took the boy’s hand and wrapped it around the struggling frog. ‘Careful, he’s slippery. You must hold him firmly, but not too tight.’
‘Oooh, he’s soft—and squishy!’ James exclaimed. ‘Mama, look! I have a frog!’
‘So I see,’ she said with a smile.
‘Can I take it back to the nursery?’
‘Unlike your puppy, who would love to join you in your bed, the frog prefers his pond,’ Alastair said. ‘We’ll leave him here—so you can catch him again next time.’
‘Do you want to catch one, Mama?’ James asked, motioning towards the frog’s fellows who, while hopping a safe distance away, still remained in the shallows.
‘Ladies don’t like to get their shoes muddy—or their hands squishy,’ Alastair told him.
Diana raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, this lady isn’t so pudding-hearted. I’ll have you know that, on plant-gathering expeditions with my father—your grandpapa,’ she told James, ‘the one who taught me to draw—I’ve caught any number of frogs.’
‘Really, Mama? You know how?’ James asked, awed.
‘Really?’ Alastair echoed, grinning at her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I think I recognise a challenge when I hear one. Very well. Attention, Monsieur Grenouille!’ Pushing up the sleeves of her pelisse, she walked to the edge of the pool.
‘Don’t fall in,’ Alastair advised.
Ignoring him, she manoeuvred around a tree stump and crouched behind a big rock, eyeing her prey. Then, with a speed equal to Alastair’s, she lunged forward, capturing a fat bullfrog before he could leap away.
‘You did it, Mama!’ James shrieked, almost dropping his own frog in his excitement.
‘Bravo!’ Alastair applauded. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Would you like to hold it?’ Diana asked Alastair in dulcet tones belied by the twinkle in her eye. When he demurred, she said, ‘Shall we put them back, James, so they may swim for a while? Being held is very tiring for a frog.’
‘Must I?’
‘You can chase another one later. Why don’t we sit here on the bank and watch them?’
With a sigh, James carefully lowered his frog to the water, where it leapt free and swam away. Diana pulled him to sit in front of her, smoothing his hair.
‘Was this like the time you told me about,’ he asked, leaning against her, ‘when you went looking for plants with your papa and fell in the brook?’
‘Yes, it was very like this.’ To Alastair’s look of enquiry, she explained, ‘We’d gone hunting marsh irises. When I found one, I got so excited I slipped and fell in. Papa came to pull me out, scolding—but he slipped and fell in, too.’ She smiled. ‘We both started laughing, splashed water at each other, and then he wrapped me in his coat and carried me home for tea.’
‘Well, if you fall in today, I promise to wrap you in my coat and carry you back,’ Alastair said.
‘Me, too?’ James asked.
‘Of course, you, too.’
‘Good.’ James snuggled back against his mother, who handed him a pebble to throw into the stream. ‘You’re Robbie’s Uncle Alastair, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Alastair answered, puzzled by the question. Surely the boy hadn’t forgotten him? ‘We went for Sally Lunn cakes in Bath, you’ll remember.’
‘Oh, yes. They were very good. I just wondered, are you anyone’s papa, too? ’Cause you’d be the bestest one. You know about cakes and soldiers and frogs and everything.’
Alastair swallowed hard. I might have been yours. ‘No, I’m not a papa...yet.’
‘Mama says my papa’s gone to Heaven and I won’t see him any more.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I imagine you miss him.’
The boy shrugged. ‘I never saw him much. Minnie said he was a great man and had much important business. He didn’t have time for soldiers or cakes or frogs.’
‘Then he missed something much more important,’ Alastair said sharply, his bitterness towards the Duke expanding to include the outrage of a little boy ignored. ‘Spending time with you.’
James gazed up at him. ‘You think I’m important?’
‘Very important.’
The boy’s face broke into a smile. ‘Good. ’Cause I think you’re important, too. Isn’t he, Mama?’
Diana looked over at him, her expression tender. ‘He is indeed.’
For an instant, the stream, the child, the bird chatter and brook gurgle faded. All Alastair could see, could feel, was Diana, smiling at him, her face no longer tense and guarded, but open, almost innocent. As he remembered it from all those years ago.
‘Mama, look!’
Startled out of his reverie, Alastair watched the boy scramble down the bank. ‘Is this the plant you found with your papa?’ he asked Diana, pointing to a wildflower covered in tiny white blossoms.
‘No, marsh irises bloom in the spring. That’s a wood aster.’
‘It’s so pretty! It looks like stars!’
The words seemed to spring from somewhere deep within him. ‘All the wonder of a starry sky/held in two small hands.’
‘Lovely,’ Diana said. ‘Is that from a poem?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps the beginning of one.’
‘I hadn’t thought to ask how your writing has gone. Interrupted by the army, I would imagine, but I should think you’d have completed several volumes of verse by now.’
‘Actually, I haven’t written since... Not for a long time.’
‘Well, you should. You’re a wonderful poet! If you considered it a travesty that I haven’t painted for years, it’s even more so for you not to be writing.’
‘Can we pick some of the flowers? For the bouquets?’ James was asking.
‘That would be lovely. Maybe some of those ferns, too.’
As he watched them gather the plants, Diana looking as carefree as he remembered her from long ago, he thought the day could not be more perfect.
A long-forgotten warmth and tenderness expanded his chest until he felt he might burst with the fullness of it. Thick and sweet as honey, it suffused him, seeping into every cold and bitter crevice of his soul.
The intensity of it brought tears to his eyes.
With a sudden shock, he recognised the emotion: joy. Something he had not experienced in all the years since Diana had jilted him to marry Graveston.
In another sweeping flash of insight, with the words to follow the lines he’d quoted churning and bubbling beneath the surface, he realised that he’d not given up poetry because it was juvenile, or had no place in the army. That inclination, like joy, had died when he lost Diana.
Mesmerised, he watched mother and child, awed by the wonder of it, swept away by the power of the emotion gripping him. The sun seemed warmer, the crystalline blue of the sky brighter, the breeze on his forehead softer. As if all his life, from then until now, had been lived under clouds, until Diana returned to dissipate them and bring him once again into full sunlight.
He’d known that Diana’s years with Graveston had taught her to lock away her feelings. But he saw now that without her, he, too, had bottled up or suppressed his emotions. The restlessness, the unresolved anger, the fact that in no place and with no other woman had he found fu
lfilment, were mute testimony to a soul in bondage, waiting for the one catalyst that could set him free.
Diana. In some fashion beyond logic or reason, she...completed him. Made him whole again.
Savouring the joy, he knew in that moment that, whatever it took, however long it took, he had to win her back. He couldn’t return to life in the shadows.
To win her, though, he’d have to help her find her own way back to the light. And once she was free of the ghosts of her past, he couldn’t let her go.
In a daze, distracted by his new insights, he took the flowers and ferns the two had gathered, escorted them back to the kitchen garden and found them a trug to hold their bounty, then bid them goodbye and went off to find the estate agent.
He rode about the estate with Hutchens, setting up assistance for the injured farmer, consulting with other tenants about the harvest, but while he said and did what was necessary, his mind hovered around the imperative of saving Diana, loving her, and having her back in his life.
It had been two weeks now; if Will didn’t show up soon, he’d break down and go hunting for him.
It would be satisfying to confront Blankford directly. Alastair wished he might invent some pretext for challenging him, so he might get his fists on the man. Though, in his estimation of Blankford’s character, the Duke probably didn’t possess the physical courage to meet someone truly his match. He’d rather harass defenceless women, Alastair thought with scorn.
Well, Diana was one woman no Duke of Graveston would ever harass again. The sooner that business was done, the sooner he could begin his campaign to woo her back into his life.
Chapter Twenty
Fading daylight was turning the gold of the ripening fields to amber as Alastair rode back to the barns. After turning his mount over to a groom, he walked back to the house, his pace increasing, eager to wash, change, and seek out Diana.
Just thinking about seeing her made his heart leap with anticipation.
As he approached the side entrance, a carriage drove past him towards the stables. Excitement shocked through him. Might Will be back? Changing course, he sped towards the main entry.
To his delight, he did indeed find his cousin and his lovely, dark-haired wife in the hall, where his mother was embracing a little boy who looked a bit younger than James.
‘Alastair, only see who Will has brought to visit us!’ his mother cried as he ascended the steps. ‘Elodie and Philippe! Well, young man,’ she addressed the child, ‘there’s a boy here—and a puppy—who will be most happy to meet you!’
‘C’est ma tante—et mon cousin?’ the boy asked, pointing to Mrs Ransleigh and Alastair.
‘Oui, Philippe, but you must practise your English now,’ his mother said. ‘Alastair, how good to see you again.’
‘And you, Elodie. You’re looking very well! Living in Paris must agree with you.’
‘Paris is my heart, but it is my garden at Salmford that refreshes me, as my loving husband knows.’
‘Let Wendell show you to your rooms, so you can get settled!’ his mother said. ‘Perhaps we can meet for wine and light refreshments before dinner, so our two young boys can become acquainted?’
‘That would be lovely, Tante Grace,’ Elodie replied. ‘Philippe, viens avec Maman.’
‘I’ll be up in a moment,’ Will said, squeezing his wife’s hand before releasing her to ascend the stairs behind Wendell, while the boy trotted after her, gazing about this new dwelling with unselfconscious curiosity.
‘I know you’ve been anxious, but I thought I’d stop long enough to bring Elodie and her son with me. Let the ladies and the boys get acquainted, while I let you know where things stand. Shall we talk now, or later?’
‘Now—once I find Diana. I couldn’t discuss what concerns her so nearly without her present.’
‘She’s like Elodie, then,’ Will said. ‘Not one to put up with men making decisions for her.’
‘After what she endured at her husband’s hands, one can hardly blame her. Even if she does trust us.’
‘As I recall from years ago, she was always lively and spirited, discussing, with the expertise and directness of a man, topics far removed from the normal feminine concerns.’ Will shook his head and laughed. ‘A horse-breeder, a French exile, a maligned duchess? We Ransleighs do seem to find unusual women.’
‘Truly! Let me go fetch this one. Shall I meet you in the library? If she’s where I suspect, I’ll be back directly.’
* * *
He did indeed find Diana at her easel in the north parlour she’d taken over as her studio. As she looked up upon his entry, he said abruptly, ‘Will’s back.’
Her eyes widened and she gasped. ‘Did he tell you—?’
‘Not yet. I thought you’d want to be there to hear his account, too.’
‘I would, thank you. Shall I come now?’
He nodded. Hastily pulling off the apron that protected her gown, she tossed it beside the easel and walked to him. ‘I’ll worry about cleaning paint off my fingers later. Did he...give you any hint of what occurred?’
‘No. But he tarried long enough to collect his wife and her son. If something were amiss, I think he would have come directly here.’
He held out his hand, and with a shuddering breath, she took it. ‘I hope so.’
He gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. ‘Remember, whatever he has to report, I will make sure you and James are safe.’ Safe and with me, he added silently.
She gave him a slight smile. ‘I do trust you. I just don’t want to put you at risk—again.’
‘You won’t. Not this time.’
* * *
They found Will in the library, lounging in one of the leather wing chairs, sipping his brandy. He scrambled to his feet as they entered.
And made Diana a deep bow. ‘Duchess,’ he said, his face unreadable.
A tiny frown came and went on her forehead. ‘Never that. Once it was “Will” and “Diana”. I’d prefer that, if you please.’
They stared at each other, Diana standing erect and unflinching under Will’s hard, assessing gaze. Alastair held his breath, hoping what he’d told Will and what his cousin had learned at Graveston Court would triumph over any anger his cousin still harboured towards Diana for the anguish she’d caused him—and those who cared about him.
After a moment, apparently satisfied, Will nodded. ‘Diana, then, if I’m to be Will again.’
‘I would like that—if you can bear it.’
‘From what I’ve discovered, it is you who had much to bear.’
‘Please proceed, Will,’ Alastair said. ‘And leave out no detail.’
After motioning them to a seat, Will began. ‘I arrived at Wickham’s End in my guise as pedlar two days after Alastair left Salmford, bringing along two of my men, posing as horse-traders, in case I needed reinforcement. After taking a bed at the local public house, I proceeded to the taproom and announced, with some boasting about my wares, that I’d be making rounds of any interested households. Of course, they all were.’
‘Played a few hands of cards, too, I’d guess,’ Alastair interjected.
‘Naturally. How else could a poor pedlar afford a room? While I won a little, lost a little, I got to hear all the local gossip. Since the death of a duke and the arrival of his heir were the most significant events to occur in that small village for a decade, talk soon turned to that.’
‘What did you learn?’ Diana asked.
‘They’d heard nothing of the sort immediately after the old Duke’s demise, but more recently, someone had been going about, stirring up rumours. Some said the new Duke’s man was asking for witnesses, saying the Dowager Duchess might be complicit in her husband’s death. Opinion seemed divided over the possibility. Some said she was a cold woman, not properly submi
ssive to her husband. Others denied that, telling of a friend or relation who’d received clothing or baskets of food from her, and argued it was she who’d done the most to share the Duke’s wealth with the community. All knew Graveston as a hard, proud, unapproachable man.’ Will laughed. ‘One said “if his lady done him in, he probably deserved it”.’
‘And then what?’ Alastair asked, impatient to get to the crux of the story.
‘I made my rounds in town, then to some of the tenant farmers—where I had my first break. Gossiping while admiring a trinket she couldn’t afford, the farm wife said her no-good brother-in-law was boasting of doing some work for new Duke, that was going to set him up right—serving as a witness against the old Duchess, who was for murdering her husband. It was the work of an afternoon to track down this Jamie Peters and invite him to share a pint. A few hands of cards and a great quantity of gin later, he confided he was to testify that he’d bought large amounts of laudanum for the Dowager Duchess, who told him she was going to slip a little more each day into the old Duke’s food unnoticed.’
‘The scoundrel!’ Alastair exploded.
‘You see?’ Diana cried, grim-faced. ‘I knew Blankford would do whatever it took to incriminate me.’
Will held up a hand. ‘Calm down—I’m not finished yet. I asked Mr Peters if he was aware of the penalties for perjury. Painted a vivid picture of prison hulks, transportation and hanging. After giving him a moment to digest that, I suggested if he wanted cash, I would give him more than the Duke was offering if he would shut his mouth and resettle in another area of England. After some...encouragement, he was persuaded to take my money and leave.’
‘Encouragement?’ Alastair repeated, his eyebrows raised.
‘Well, I might have suggested my sword could make short work of a man who’d shred a woman’s reputation and risk her life for a handful of coins. I had one of my men escort him to Falmouth, so he might take ship and start a new life in the Americas. Farewell, incriminating witness.’
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