by Charles Todd
Victoria Leighton filled her dreams, scolding her, driving her—toward what? And the doubts that the old rector, Mr. Chatham, had raised, rang through her head until it ached.
Sometimes she dreamed of Richard as well. Loving dreams, happy dreams, but always ending with her running in fear from something in the shadows. Surely a foreboding of what was to come . . .
Stevens asked her again what was wrong. And Richard sometimes watched her face with silent concern, as if he wondered whether she was having second thoughts.
Was there any truth in Victoria Leighton’s words?
Could she, Francesca, actually be the love child of Francis Hatton and that woman? Was she in reality a half sister to the man she was marrying—and no relation at all to the cousins she’d loved?
She couldn’t feel the way she did and be his sister.
But there was the old saying—half brother, half lover. . . .
The wedding was set for the fourteenth of December. She had agreed to it.
She searched her own face in her mirror.
It was all lies. It had to be. Some sort of warped vengeance.
What if I marry him and later—when it’s too late—we find out it was true?
There was the entry in a church record in Gloucestershire . . .
Proof? Or forgery?
It’s all lies—
But what if it isn’t?
On the first of December, with barely two weeks left until the wedding, Francesca went to find William Stevens.
She couldn’t keep her counsel any longer. In the mirror her face was thin and strained. At night she slept poorly. Sometimes when Richard Leighton touched her, she flinched, as if it was not right. . . .
Francesca waited until Mrs. Horner had gone home for the day, when the Rectory was empty, no hopeful ears lingering to catch the occasional word. This was not a matter for Hurley’s gossip.
But when she arrived at the Rectory and was seated in the tranquil parlor, with its Victorian furnishings and paintings of Devon scenes, she lost her nerve.
Stevens was patient, waiting, talking about whatever came into his mind, and allowing her time to work through her reluctance.
He is a good man, she told herself. Why couldn’t I have loved him, the way he deserves? He doesn’t remind me at all of my grandfather—he doesn’t have that darkness within him that I saw in Richard—and Francis Hatton.
But love wasn’t something planned; it waylaid you and took you by surprise.
Finally she said, “I had a visitor some time ago. She claimed she was Victoria Leighton.”
“My God!” Stevens exclaimed, staring at Francesca. “Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. That’s why I haven’t said anything.”
“Are you going to tell Leighton?”
“No—”
“But you must! He has a right to know!”
“No,” she said again. “He was only a child. He wouldn’t even recognize her. And she isn’t the mother he remembers.”
“You have no choice but to tell him! This isn’t your decision. Leighton—his father—however hard it may be for them to hear the truth, they deserve to know if the woman is still alive. It changes everything! It frees your grandfather of suspicion, it lifts the cloud over this marriage. You must go to him and tell him!”
Yes, it would change those things, she answered silently, but you don’t know how it would change the rest— And then what will I do, when I’ve lost him?
Aloud she said, “You haven’t met her. You can’t judge what a disastrous experience it could be.”
“I refuse to believe that. However low she’s fallen, whatever she may have done, she’s his flesh and blood! No, Francesca, I say again, you can’t make that choice for the Leightons.” And then he saw the other side of what he’d just been told.
“Why did she come to you? Why not to her son? Where has she been all these years?”
“I’ve just told you. She didn’t want to see him. She herself asked me not to tell him!”
“She’s ashamed—it’s a cry for help—for peace—she’s asking you to mediate—”
“You weren’t there!” Francesca cried. “There’s no shame, there’s no sense of guilt! She’s done what she has done, and there is no shame! That’s what’s so terrible.”
“What has she done?”
“She—took a lover,” Francesca said desperately. “It was what she wanted to do.”
“But why should she come to you?” he repeated, watching her face.
“I don’t know. But if I tell Richard— He’s made his peace with the past. I don’t want to stir it up again.”
“I warn you, it’s not your choice to make.”
“Yes, it is, she asked me not to tell him—”
“Probably feeling certain that you would.”
Francesca shook her head. It was worse than she’d thought. Stevens, from the churchman’s point of view, saw the prodigal daughter returning to the bosom of her family.
But Francesca had read the same scripture, and remembered that the prodigal son had returned only after he’d spent his inheritance and had nowhere else to go. Desperation, not a heartfelt desire to be forgiven?
If she was certain of nothing else, she was certain that Victoria Leighton did not seek forgiveness.
“You’re blinded by the teachings of the church,” she told him wearily. “Just stop and think for a moment. Think how you’d feel if your mother came here one day, out of the blue, to tell you she’d sinned—and enjoyed it.”
Without hesitation, he said, “I’d forgive her.”
“Yes, I’m sure you would. That’s your nature. But how would you feel when all of Hurley took one look at her and knew what she had been—and what she’d done.”
He grinned. “Sticks and stones—”
“Oh, do be serious! Not even you have enough forgiveness to stomach standing in the pulpit week after week, reading pity and speculation in the eyes of all your parish! In the end, you’d want another living. It would wear you down. Try to tell young girls the wages of sin, when they already know, because the gaudily dressed woman living upstairs here in the Rectory was once a whore and still came home to forgiveness. Not perhaps the best example.”
“All right. I understand what it is you’re trying to say. But it comes down to the same question: What do you intend to do?”
“I wanted to tell you everything—and I wanted you to tell me it didn’t matter. I wanted—I don’t know, I wanted—absolution—”
“Absolution isn’t mine to give. Will you tell Leighton?”
“If she wants him to know she’s alive, let her find him and explain for herself!”
“If he loves you—”
Love has nothing to do with an incestuous marriage, she wanted to shout at him.
But even as the thought formed, she knew that Richard Leighton meant as much to her as her grandfather and any of her cousins had. And I shall always love him—whatever happens now. There’ll never be anyone else. If he dies, I’ll have done my best to make him happy while I could. It’s what I can offer him. A lifetime of love for whatever time we have left to us! A sanctuary for him. Just as my grandfather provided a sanctuary for me.
It was almost a relief to admit it to herself. She felt better, stronger.
And what if it turned out not to be true, what Victoria Leighton has claimed? What if I believed her lies, and walked away from Richard just as she had done all those years ago? Without a word of explanation.
Was my grandfather locked into silence, too? Unwilling to tell Tom Leighton and his son what a monster Victoria was?
But what revenge will she take if I defy her?
FRANCIS HATTON . . .
I’m dying.
That fool of a doctor cheerfully tells me otherwise, and I’d like to throttle him.
It’s a daily struggle to keep my wits about me. I can hear your voice, Francesca, and sometimes in the shadows I can see your face. I must tell you wh
at’s been left unsaid. But I’ve trained myself to silence so long that now it’s hard to break it.
Can you hear me, Francesca?
Victoriaah . . .
God help me, have I left it too late?
Listen to me! When I met her, Victoria was engaged to marry Tom Leighton. Her father, MacPherson, held a weekend party to introduce Tom to their family and friends, and I was included among the guests. His daughter waylaid me in the garden that afternoon, and for a time I played her game of light flirtation. She asked what flower I liked best, and I told her autumn crocuses. I added—it was true—they matched her gown. She asked if I thought she was beautiful, and I told her she was. God knew, I thought Tom was a lucky man. And then she asked me to kiss her and let her see if Tom’s kisses tasted as sweet. I could have had her. She made that clear. There among the flower beds, with the sun warm on our backs.
Thank God, Tom was too besotted with her to see. But MacPherson realized what she was up to. I think any excuse to disparage me to his friends and Tom Leighton’s pleased him, and he put the blame for his daughter’s wanton behavior squarely at my door. When I made Victoria cry on her wedding day, Tom set it down to bridal nerves. I couldn’t tell my closest friend that as we danced together, his bride begged me to take her away to Italy.
I avoided his house and his company after that.
It’s true I lusted for her. Which must have fed her vanity. But she was Tom’s wife and I was beginning to realize that what she wanted most was what she couldn’t have. If I’d slept with her then, what followed would never have happened. Instead she damned me on her wedding night. I have the letter somewhere . . . Branscombe’s box.
When she tired of marriage, she did her best to see that I was blamed for her disappearance. She’d warned me if I came forward with the truth, she would swear that I’d done unspeakable things to her, there on the Downs. She’s a remarkable actress. Everyone would have believed her. Especially Tom. Her father had already been convinced that she was afraid of me. He turned on me with vengeful spite, giving me no peace.
And neither has she.
It was surely her hand behind that gambler in Essex making your father’s disgrace public. I was obliged to send Edward out of the country until the gossip died down. My son’s death sentence, as surely as if I’d killed him myself. And she wrote to your uncle Tristan’s wife, blaming her miscarriage on syphilis. That had diabolical consequences.
Listen to me! Victoria has a genius for discovering weaknesses and using them to hurt. You must never forget that.
I know why she tried to kill herself on the Murder Stone—she hated River’s End, because I refused to make her its mistress. I wished she’d died then. When Simon turned the stone into his battlefield, I thought, he hasn’t been harmed by discovering her there. There was no way of foreseeing that the stone’s wars would send your cousins to France and a real one. I should have dragged it away long ago, as far from River’s End as I could reach. She gloated, you know. After each telegram.
The only person she hasn’t touched is you. She’s tried, but I always managed to block her. When I’m dead, don’t put an announcement in the Times, do you hear?
Francesca—do you understand what I’m trying to say to you?
Believe me.
I never loved Victoria Leighton.
CHAPTER 35
The days slipped by. Francesca found it impossible to eat, and Mrs. Lane accused her, laughingly, of being lovesick.
Mrs. Horner brought her a small gift, a beautiful lace-edged tablecloth. When Francesca thought of the hours spent in making it, she embraced the woman, too grateful for words.
Mrs. Tallon, hearing the good news, wrote to ask if Francesca needed anything for her trousseau. “For we must all share, in such times. I have some nice bits and pieces I’ve kept in a chest all these years. French silk . . .”
And Mrs. Lane, like a girl, was filled with suggestions for the wedding feast. “I’ve put by a bit of sugar, and some butter from Mrs. Handly’s cows, and there’s sultanas and Mrs. Danner’s hens are laying well, just now . . .”
Everyone sought to make a contribution. Three of the women in the village had volunteered to help Mrs. Lane clean the house from attics to cellars.
And Mr. Ranson, at The Spotted Calf, had put in an order for beer and ale, and whatever else could be found.
Tommy Higby’s mother sent a cheese.
In London these would have been scorned as country gifts, but to Francesca they were priceless.
But it was all for nothing.
A travesty, Mr. Chatham had called this marriage.
And Francesca went on carrying her burden in silence.
Richard Leighton came daily, offering her his love in many small ways. To pass the time he read to her, he played chess with her, he told her tales of his military training. And he brought news of the war. It had become a slogging match, he said, neither side able to make significant gains and declare a victory at the Somme. She was reminded more than once that Harry had died in vain, over inches of ground.
“We haven’t the men to make a clean sweep of it,” Richard said another morning, in low spirits himself. She could tell that he longed to go back to his company, that he felt he’d deserted them. It was a bond between soldiers no woman could understand. But it went deep, and she honored it.
“For a great curse has been laid upon my house . . .”
The lines of the Latin poem often came to her in the night, and Francesca was reminded of the anguish that must have followed her grandfather into his last hours.
It must have been in the back of his mind for years, that ominous letter sent to him anonymously. But he hadn’t needed a signature to know who had sent it. He must have watched over the years with a niggling but growing fear that the curse on paper was only a pale reflection of the hatred directed at him by Alasdair MacPherson, and then his daughter’s destructive jealousy. But what had he felt about Victoria? Had it begun as love?
Sometimes she hobbled down the passages at night, the rubber tips of her crutches making soft thudding sounds on the polished wood. Or lay in her bed, trying not to wake Miss Trotter, watching the shadows change across the ceiling above her head as the fire on the hearth slowly died.
If Victoria Leighton is telling the truth, I can’t marry him. . . .
What does she really want from me?
I’m not his sister! It’s a lie, a trap!
On the third night, she decided there was nothing else she could do until she paid another visit to Mr. Chatham.
Bill drove her to the cottage outside Exmouth in a cold and implacable rain that matched Francesca’s mood. Halfway to the sea, she almost asked him to turn back, not sure she was prepared to hear the truth.
She had heard nothing more from Victoria Leighton. She wondered if she ever would. Plainly, Victoria had done what she had set out to do: spoil Francesca’s joy in her marriage.
They reached Budleigh Salterton, the sea curtained in rain and heavy clouds, and found the turning for Mr. Chatham’s cottage.
The stones in the path were slippery with wet, and she concentrated on where she set her feet before lifting the knocker.
Chatham was not happy to see her.
She thought for an instant that he would turn her away. And then he opened the door wider, and reluctantly invited her in.
Removing her wet coat, she handed her dripping umbrella back to Bill. He nodded to the rector from the entry and then was gone, boots splashing through the puddles as he made his way back to the motorcar.
As before, the rector had to clear a chair for her to sit on, and as he did, he said, “I’m afraid to ask you what has brought you here again.”
“Victoria Leighton came to River’s End—some weeks ago, now.”
Chatham stared at her as if she’d told him the devil had danced on the chimney pots. But all he said was, “Indeed?”
“At least she claimed she was Victoria Leighton! She was—not what I’d expe
cted.”
He was silent, waiting for her to go on. A gust of wind rattled the cottage windows and roared down the hearth, sending sparks up the chimney.
“She told me she’d purposely abandoned her husband and her son. And that afterward she’d taken up with my grandfather.”
His face was grave. “I always feared that might be the way of it. But I had hoped he was stronger. There was an evil attraction there, had been before she was married. She was the kind of woman, he said, who got under a man’s skin. It was a power she enjoyed, he said. She had no shame.”
“Her family believe she’s dead. What should I do?”
“They would prefer to believe she was dead. I myself believed it. It was always in my mind that she had killed herself when Francis Hatton walked away from her.”
It was not the way Victoria Leighton had told the story.
“Why do you say that?”
“There was a woman who cut her wrists on that white stone in the back garden of River’s End. The old housekeeper, the one who preceded Mrs. Lane, told me as much on her deathbed. It had weighed on her mind over the years. She never knew what had happened or what became of the body. Only that there was a great deal of blood, and from the upstairs window she could see the woman lying there, white as a corpse. Young Simon was standing near, not ten feet away. By the time the housekeeper reached the gardens, they were empty. She was distressed over it, but never spoke of it except at the end.”
“Gentle God! Victoria, then?”
The storm seemed to veer a little, rain striking the windows now, drumming hard on the glass. The roads would be mired in mud—she mustn’t linger.
“Self-destruction is an offense against God,” Chatham was saying. “I felt Francis Hatton must bear some guilt for what she did.”
“And my cousin Simon? Is it possible he had seen it all?”
“He was very young at the time, scarcely six. I’ve always prayed the boy didn’t understand what was happening.”