‘She’s asleep,’ she said, adding with a smile, ‘so is Mrs Mead.’
Sebastian held the front door open and they stepped out into a bright, warm day.
‘Mrs Mead has been with us since Connie was a babe. I apologise if she has seemed a little high handed today,’ Sebastian said.
Isabel shook her head. ‘She has every right to be. It was very presumptuous of me to come in and tell her everything she had been doing was wrong. I shall try and make it up to her.’
They had reached the heart of the village, marked by a pleasant village green with a duck pond and, behind it, the pretty church that had been his stepfather’s living.
Isabel looked up as the clock in the church tower struck four.
‘Good heavens. Is that the time?’
Sebastian smiled. ‘It’s the bucolic life. One loses track of time.’
Isabel looked around her. No one was to be seen in the quiet village. Somewhere she could hear children squabbling and the sound of chickens. ‘It’s so peaceful here. Do you miss it?’
He didn’t answer for a long moment before saying. ‘Any place where you have grown up and known happiness will always have a special place in your affections, but I haven’t really lived here since I was sixteen. The Army has been my home and if I had remained just plain Sebastian Alder there would have been few enough jobs for army captains on half pay. Whatever line of work I could find would not have brought me back here, Isabel.’
‘Well I think Little Benning is lovely. And the cottage is charming.’
Sebastian glanced back at the little cottage, still visible from where they stood. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It may be small but it’s mine, every stone in it bought with my hard earned pennies and, I have to confess, it feels more real to me than Brantstone.’
‘I can understand that. Everyone needs to belong somewhere and, in your heart, this is where you belong.’
‘I hope that, in time, I will come to belong at Brantstone, Lady Somerton.’
She looked up at him. ‘But you do belong at Brantstone. It may not feel like it but, even in such a short time, you have made your mark.’
‘Do you really think so?’
She nodded.
‘Kind of you to say that but it’s not home…not yet. What about you, Isabel? Where do you belong?’
She shook her head. ‘I certainly don’t belong at Brantstone. I never have.’
His eyes widened and she added. ‘Please don’t mistake me. I like the dower house and I’m looking forward to living there. It is the first time in my life that I will have a place of my own, as you would say, a place to belong.’
He frowned. ‘I must say no one would describe Brantstone as homely, but perhaps there is more to a sense of belonging than just the bricks and mortar. Is it about feeling wanted…and loved?’
She caught her breath. She had felt neither wanted nor loved for most of the years she had spent at Brantstone. If she had been, would she think of it differently?
He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know why you came to Little Benning, but I’m glad you did, Isabel.’
Grateful for the change in subject, Isabel looked up at him and smiled. ‘I was born to interfere.’
After the events of the last day, her original motives for accompanying him now seemed base and unworthy.
Sebastian indicated a neat stone house beside the church.
‘The Vicarage. Where we all grew up.’ A frown creased his forehead. ‘When my father died, the new rector was on the doorstep within a week demanding we vacate it. I had barely recovered my feet from the wound I’d taken at Talavera and I had the responsibility for a grieving ten year old and an angry fifteen year old.’
‘Oh, how awful. What did you do?’
Sebastian sighed. ‘I tried to talk to the new squire but the old squire had been dead a few years and this man was a distant cousin with no interest in the village except what rents it brought him. The best he could do was offer me the cottage and it was in a shocking state of disrepair but, between us, we turned it into something habitable. That’s all history now. Once Connie and Matt come to Brantstone it will cease to be home.’
‘What will you do with it?’
He smiled. ‘Oh, I have a notion but I don’t want to spoil any surprises so I will keep it to myself for now.’
They had reached the lychgate to the churchyard and Isabel followed him up the uneven flagstones toward the church. They stopped in the porch. The heavy, oak door stood open but he seemed hesitant to enter.
‘This is where the Reverend Alder found us on Christmas morning. I was still a babe in arms and my mother near death.’
Isabel stared up at him. ‘He found you on the church porch?’
He nodded. ‘What few warm things she had she had used to wrap me in. I suppose she must have been at the end of her resources and thought that, if she were to die, there was a chance that I might survive and be found by the Christmas churchgoers the next morning. It was sheer chance that the Reverend Alder found her in time.’
‘What brought her here of all places?’ Isabel turned to look back at the tranquil village.
Sebastian shrugged. ‘My mother never talked about the time between my father’s death and her rescue by the Reverend Alder, so I suppose I will never know.’ He smiled a crooked smile. ‘God, perhaps?’
They stepped into the soft light of the church and stood at the top of the aisle, looking down towards the sanctuary. The building smelt of dust and damp, mingling together with the scent of furniture polish.
Sebastian entered a pew and knelt, bending his head over his hands. Isabel slipped in beside him and, closing her eyes, said a brief prayer for Connie’s speedy recovery. Sebastian straightened and they sat together for a long time in silence, looking up at the altar. The late afternoon sun streamed through the fine stained-glass window of the crucifixion, spilling coloured jewels onto the stone flags.
‘I still expect to see him,’ Sebastian said at last.
‘Your stepfather?’
He nodded.
‘How did he die?’ she asked.
‘He’d gone into Chester for a meeting with the Bishop. A runaway horse hit him as he was crossing the road. He died four days later.’ He looked at her and rose to his feet. ‘Come, Lady Somerton. There is a beautiful evening waiting for us.’
They walked back out into the sunlight and the peace of the old churchyard.
***
Outside, they stood in the porch looking down the path towards the village. Sebastian scanned the ragged lines of graves. He had a sense of a job unfinished. One more loose end to tie off. It had occurred to him as he had sat in the church that this visit to Little Bennning marked a transition point, a crossroads between his old life and his new. There could be no turning back now.
‘Will you excuse me, Isabel, but while I am here I should pay respects to my parents,’ he said.
She looked up at him with understanding in her eyes. He had the odd sensation at times that this strange woman seemed to see into his soul.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Do you wish to be alone?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s of no matter to me.’
He strode through the maze of crooked headstones and battered tombs, looking neither right nor left, to the quiet corner of the churchyard where John and Margory Alder lay together in death as they had been in life. Their grave, marked only with a simple headstone, had been well tended and a posy of now dead flowers had been laid on the grass. Connie’s work, he suspected.
‘Did you know that, when a clergyman is buried, he is buried facing the west, not the east,’ Sebastian said, his hand resting on the headstone.
‘Why?’
He glanced at her. ‘So that come judgment day, he will rise up and be facing his congregation.’
‘That is reassuring,’ Isabel said, stooping to collect up the dead flowers, replacing them with a handful of wildflowers she had picked from around the churchyard. She knelt for a m
oment by the grave as if in private prayer.
Laying her hand on the ground, she said in a soft voice. ‘I wish I had somewhere like this for William. I had no say in where he was placed. He went to that cold, unloving mausoleum.’
‘And yet you visit him every day?’
Isabel looked up. ‘How did you know?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve seen you. Isabel, forgive me for saying this, but it is easy to spend too long in the company of the dead.’
Anger flared in her eyes as Isabel rose to her feet to face him.
‘What do you mean by that?’ she demanded, her voice sharp with reproach.
‘I apologise. I spoke out of turn. I have no right to judge you.’
‘No you don’t. Not when you still live with the ghosts of the past, Sebastian.’
She looked at him with those knowing eyes and Sebastian froze. Of course, the death of parents was a terrible loss, but it was part of life. The death of a child or the death of someone you loved more than life…
She took a step toward him. ‘Tell me about Inez, Sebastian.’
Inez…Inez…
For a long moment he stared at her, the name echoing in his mind. How could she know? All the memories came rushing back and once more he smelled the dust and the blood of that terrible day. He put his hand on a nearby gravestone to steady himself and brought himself back to the present.
Isabel watched him, waiting for him to speak about the one thing in the whole world for which he had no words.
He swallowed, trying to make his voice sound neutral as he said, ‘Coming home is not always a good thing, Lady Somerton. Sometimes there are memories that are best forgotten. How did you know…about Inez?‘’
‘You called me by her name…in London,’ Isabel said softly.
She made no further move toward him and he closed his eyes. He could not turn away now. She was entitled to an explanation. He began, trying to keep his voice neutral, ‘Inez Aradeiras was the daughter of a Colonel in the Portuguese army. We had married in Lisbon and she was on her way from Lisbon to join me with the regiment. Her father had sent an escort but they were overcome by a band of French marauders. They killed every man and…’ He screwed up his eyes as he tried to contain the emotion that shook his voice, even now after all these years. ‘Inez was murdered by the French.’
He stopped there. Isabel did not need to know the rest. How he had failed to protect the one person he loved more than life itself. How it had been his misfortune to come upon the scene. How he had hunted Cara Desencajada, the man with the twisted face who had killed her…and his own death wish at Talavera.
‘The only people who know the whole story are Harry Dempster and Bennet, of course. They were there. The only other person I have ever told was my stepfather,’ he glanced up at the church, ‘here in this church, on the day I returned from Spain.’
He took a deep breath, remembering the day he had returned to Little Benning, still on crutches and in terrible pain. His faltering steps had taken him instinctively to the church, as if he needed to find a forgiving God, not the vengeful God of the Spanish churches.
His stepfather had been there and seated on the hard, stone steps to the sanctuary. In jerking phrases that barely made sense, even to his own ears, Sebastian had poured out his story. Through it all the Reverend Alder had sat quite still, not one twitch of his face betraying any revulsion or horror or judgment at Sebastian’s tale.
Instead, the good man had risen to his feet and, placing his hands on Sebastian’s head, quietly pronounced absolution. As the words were murmured above him, the last wall of Sebastian’s reserve broke and he had wept in his stepfather’s arms like a child.
‘Sebastian…’
He brought his gaze back to the woman who stood watching him. He hardly dared to look into her eyes, expecting to see pity, but when his eyes met her steady, unblinking gaze, he saw only empathy.
He shrugged his shoulders, trying to slough away the memory of that awful day on a hot, dusty Portuguese road, but the stench of death now hung over both of them like a mantle.
What had induced him to confide in her, bring it all crashing back on top of him?
He shook his head. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Isabel. I have learned that you have to let the past go or it consumes you.’
‘How can you?’ she said.
He looked past her shoulder. ‘Anger, recrimination, bitterness doesn’t change what happened. I could spend the rest of my life consumed by rage and despair, but life is for the living, not the dead.’
‘Did your stepfather teach you that?’
He allowed himself to smile. ‘No. He gave me something more precious: forgiveness. For the rest…it was a realisation I came to by myself.’
‘Then you have more generosity of spirit than I, Sebastian.’ She crossed the few short paces between them and stood beside him, looking down at the simple grave. She looked up and her grey eyes searched his.
‘If, as you say, the past belongs to the past, why has there been no one else in your life?’
He shook his head. To let himself love another as he had loved Inez? To fail again?
As he wondered how to respond to her question, he heard his name being called and, grateful for the interruption, he glanced back towards the lychgate. Matt leaned against one of the posts, his hand on his side as if trying to catch his breath.
A sudden fear gripped him. Had Connie taken a turn for the worse? Without a thought of Isabel, he ran toward his brother. As he approached him, Matt held up his hand.
‘It’s all right, Bas! The coach is back with Dr Neville and I thought you should be there.’
‘Excellent.’ Sebastian turned to Isabel. ‘Come, Lady Somerton, you will approve of Dr Neville.’
***
Doctor Neville pronounced the patient on the mend and commended Lady Somerton on her radical actions. He departed in the Somerton coach, assured by Sebastian of future patronage.
Late in the evening, as Sebastian sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shirt, Matt, seated in a chair by the window of the little bedroom, looked around and said, ‘I’m glad you came, Bas. I felt so bloody useless.’
Sebastian frowned. ‘Your father would turn in his grave to hear you use such language.’
‘Don’t go all righteous on me, Bas. I know you are more than capable of bad language. In fact, I’ve heard you use worse.’
‘Well, that was before…’ Sebastian sighed, ‘before I had to learn to be a gentleman.’
It was Matt’s turn to smile. ‘You were always a gentleman, Bas. Even when you were swearing like a trooper.’ He looked across at his brother. ‘We’ve missed you.’
‘And I you. You have no idea how much.’
‘I didn’t want to worry you, but the doctor started making all sorts of dire prognostications and I knew you’d want to be here if…’ Matt trailed off.
If Connie had died.
‘You did the right thing, Matt. You two will always be my priority and, as soon as Connie’s up to the journey, you’re both coming to Brantstone,’ he said.
Matt grinned. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I resigned from the school today.’
‘Did you indeed? Making a bit of a presumption, aren’t you?’ Sebastian smiled at the sudden alarm in his brother’s face. ‘Whatever good fortune has come my way is yours as well, Matt, but won’t you miss teaching?’
‘You are jesting? Not for one second! What about you, Bas, will you miss the army?’
He shrugged. ‘I must admit I am getting rather tired of being shot, but yes, it was my life for a very long time and a life I knew and understood.’
‘Being a viscount is proving hard work, is it, Bas?’
Sebastian raised his eyes heavenward. ‘It certainly involves work, mostly on myself — my attire, my deportment, my speech…I could go on.’
‘Well you look the part. I hardly recognised you. Face it, you were born to it, Bas. I always knew you were different fro
m us.’
‘Of course you did. It was no secret that I was your half brother.’ He grinned. ‘I have discovered a whole clan of relations we didn’t know we had, including our grandmother.’
He perched on the end of the bed and told Matt about his grandmother, Aunt Cissy and the rest of the family. ‘I thought that, when you and Connie get to Brantstone, we shall hold a picnic day for the whole damn lot,’ he concluded.
Matt raised his eyebrows. ‘A grandmother? Who would have thought?’ He added with wonder in his voice, ‘Connie will be thrilled.’
Sebastian regarded his brother. ‘I also want you to think about what you want to do with your life, Matt. I’m in a position to send you to Oxford or Cambridge if that is what you would like.’
His brother stared at him. ‘Do you mean that?’
Sebastian nodded. He knew that it had been Matt’s long held ambition to study mathematics at Oxford, but the family finances had simply not allowed it, so Matt had to be content with teaching, a profession he loathed.
‘And Connie?’ Matt asked.
Sebastian hesitated. The easy answer was that he could, at last, provide his sister with a dowry. Even low born as she was, with a good dowry she could marry well. However, knowing his headstrong and independent minded sister, that would be something to be broached gently.
‘That will be up to Connie,’ he said evenly.
‘Now, how about you tell me about the lovely Lady Somerton?’ Matt changed the subject.
‘What do you mean “lovely”?’ Sebastian asked.
‘Are you blind, Bas? She has to be one of the most handsome women I’ve ever seen and if you haven’t noticed then you are not only blind but mad.’
Sebastian remembered his unworthy thoughts in the coach when she had landed in his lap and Harry’s words came back to him.
‘Matt, she is the respectable widow of my late cousin and she has been a good friend to me. That is all and ever will be,’ he said, words aimed at convincing himself more than his brother. ‘Lady Somerton has plans of her own. She is intent on doing good works in Manchester.’
Lord Somerton’s Heir Page 14