Isabel shook her head. ‘Not at all.’ She folded her hands on her lap. ‘Can I share something with you?’
Connie nodded.
‘Not only am I glad to be of some use, but I like it here.’
‘But it’s so small compared to what you are used to. Brantstone must be very grand.’
‘It is, but that doesn’t make it a home. This cottage may be small but this is a proper home, Constance.’ She refrained from saying that what made it a home was the invisible ingredient: love. There was no love at Brantstone.
Connie shook her head and smiled. ‘Please don’t call me Constance. The only person who calls me that is Bas and only when he’s cross with me. Everyone calls me Connie.’
Isabel smiled. ‘Connie it is. And when we are alone, you can call me Isabel.’
‘Oh, that wouldn’t be right.’
‘Please. I would be honoured.’
‘Isabel,’ Connie gave her a shy smile, ‘I haven’t thanked you for everything you have done for me.’
Isabel looked down at her hands. Two compliments in one morning?
‘It was nothing,’ she said.
‘Oh no, Mrs Mead told me what you did. I owe you my life.’
‘Ah, now you are just exaggerating. It was your own sturdy constitution and Mrs Mead’s devotion that pulled you through,’ Isabel said.
Connie’s cheeks dimpled. ‘I don’t think so. Sebastian told me you looked after him too, after Waterloo.’
This time the heat burned in Isabel’s cheeks as her mind flashed to that night in London when she had sat with him in the dark hours. ‘Again, Bennet did all the work.’
Connie smiled. ‘Oh, dear Bennet. I am looking forward to seeing him again. He’s been here a few times with Bas and he is such fun. But please don’t underplay your role. You rescued Bas from that awful hospital and he said that when he was very ill you sat with him, like you did with me.’
Isabel cleared her throat, as her mind’s eye played over the strong, muscular body she had nursed. ‘He wasn’t so very ill. I just kept him company.’
Connie looked up at the ceiling. ‘I don’t believe you. I know what wound fever is. When he came back from Spain, after Talavera, he was very ill. Dr Neville thought he would die. I heard him saying the wound had been badly treated and he had to operate again…on our kitchen table, which he did. Bas was lucky not to have his leg amputated. Afterwards, Mrs Mead said I was allowed to sit with him and hold his hand and adjust his pillows, offer him a drink of water or read to him. So I did. I probably drove him to distraction.’
Isabel recalled Sebastian using those same words to Connie when she had woken the morning her fever had broken. That explained the joke between them.
‘Sebastian really is the best of brothers, Lady Somerton,’ Connie said.
‘He is,’ Isabel agreed. ‘I wish I had a brother to care for me as much as yours do for you.’
Connie looked up, a smile dimpling her cheek. ‘I am very spoiled,’ Her face darkened. ‘I feared the worst when I heard he had been wounded again. I couldn’t bear to lose Bas. I am so glad you found him.’
‘It was lucky for both of us. Brantstone needs its lord and I think he will be a good lord.’
‘So do I,’ Connie said.
Isabel rose to her feet and circled the room. The walls were crammed with paintings, some in oil, and others watercolours or pencil sketches.
‘These are very good.’ She glanced back at Connie. ‘Are they your work?’
A faint stain of colour rose to the girl’s pale cheeks. ‘Some, but not all. These days I paint miniature portraits and it gives me a little income. I’ll show some to you when I am allowed out of bed.’
Hearing an echo of her brother in the impatient tone, Isabel smiled. ‘You will get out of bed when I say.’
‘I suppose, now I am Lord Somerton’s sister, I won’t be able to keep painting.’
Isabel shrugged. ‘Maybe not for commissions.’
Connie’s mouth tightened and Isabel saw her brother’s stubborn nature in the glint of her eyes. ‘I have no intention of becoming one of those fragile, useless little women who sit around painting vases of flowers, Lady…Isabel.’
‘I will be starting a school in the dower house next year. Perhaps you can help me?’ Isabel ventured.
Connie raised an eyebrow and Isabel laughed. ‘Yes, it is for those fragile, useless little women but the school is just a means to an end.’
She told Connie of her plans for the financing of a charity school in Manchester. Connie’s eyes widened.
‘Oh, I’d love to help, but only if I can help with the other school.’ She paused. ‘If Bas allows me, of course.’
Isabel’s mouth quirked. While gratified by Connie’s response, she had conveniently ignored the fact that Sebastian had forbidden the school in the dower house. Perhaps with Connie’s help she could persuade him to change his mind. She couldn’t imagine Sebastian saying no to anything Connie set her mind to.
She turned back to the paintings on the wall.
‘Those landscapes by the door are mine,’ Connie said. ‘The rest are mainly mother’s. She was very good. Father told me that after her first husband died, she kept herself and her baby by selling paintings. I wish I’d known her but she died when I was born,’ Connie added wistfully.
‘It seems you have inherited her talent,’ Isabel said.
‘We all have to some extent. Matthew does excellent lithographs and Sebastian, like me, is very good at people. The picture by the fireplace in the black frame is one of his.’
Isabel turned to inspect the pen and ink sketch of two small children; Connie and Matt, she surmised. The drawing, executed with perfect confidence in strong, clear lines, captured the essential characters of the two youngsters. She thought of the little sketches in the margins of the prayer book and recognised the same confident hand.
‘The artist’s eye seems to sit oddly with his life as a soldier,’ Isabel said, more to herself than to Connie.
‘Even as a soldier, he never lost the opportunity to capture a moment. Do you want to see some of his work?’
Isabel nodded, her curiosity about the soldier artist piqued.
Connie pulled herself up in the bed and pointed at the chest of drawers. ‘In the bottom drawer of my chest you will find a book wrapped in a Spanish shawl. Can you get it out?’
Isabel complied, handing the parcel to Connie. The girl ran her hands over the bright embroidery of the fringed shawl.
‘Bas sent me this from Spain,’ Connie said. ‘It’s too beautiful to wear.’
She carefully unwrapped the parcel, revealing a small notebook, its leather cover stained and one corner appeared to be badly charred. She handed it to Isabel. ‘You can have a look but don’t tell Sebastian I have it.’
Isabel turned over the battered object in her hand. ‘What happened to it?’
Connie bit her lip. ‘When he came back from the war, after Talavera, it was like he had a terrible sadness inside. One day he lit a fire and threw a whole lot of letters and other documents on to it but this book fell out and I rescued it when he wasn’t looking. I had taken a peek at it when he was ill and the drawings are so good. I couldn’t bear to see it destroyed.’
Isabel looked down at the little book. The actions Connie described seemed at odds with the Sebastian she was coming to know. She sat down on the chair beside the bed and began to turn the pages. An inscription on the first leaf said simply: ‘My darling Sebastian. Christmas 1792. Mama’. It had been a gift from his mother to her son.
Like the portrait, the little sketches were done in pen and ink, executed in a hand that became more confident with time. The early sketches recorded life in Little Benning: the vicarage and scenes from around the village. She recognised the church and market square, peopled with the villagers, the character of each recorded with affection and accuracy.
A long gap moved the story to a troop ship bound for Spain and then to the Peninsula wher
e life of an army on active campaign came to vivid life. Sketches of encampments peopled with the soldiers, their women and children mixed with Spanish villagers, toothless peasants offering oranges or other produce for sale.
She recognised the face of Harry Dempster in several of the drawings and, as the war progressed, the face of a young woman, identified only in the first sketch as ‘Inez, Lisbon, 1808’, began to dominate.
Inez. Isabel caught her breath. Here was the woman who still haunted Sebastian.
Inez appeared in various poses, even one of her asleep, her long, dark hair flowing over the bolster. She lingered on the last sketch of the young woman. A head and shoulders study, the hair carefully arranged to fall in ringlets around her oval face. Dark eyes laughed at her artist, her lips parted in a smile.
Isabel, who had never been in love, still recognised the look of love when she saw it. She looked away, struggling to control an emotion she had never encountered before… Jealousy? What did it mean to love a man so much that it shone from your eyes like a candle in the dark?
Connie leaned over to see what had caught Isabel’s attention. ‘Oh, Inez. I don’t know who she is. Sebastian has never spoken of her in my hearing.’ An unspoken ‘but’ lingered at the end of the sentence. Isabel raised her eyebrows encouragingly.
‘When he was very ill, he called her name often, but…’ Connie paused and then said, ‘I think she must be dead.’
Inez Aradeiras. Isabel hadn’t needed words to know how Inez had died at the hands of the French. It had been written in the deep lines that grooved Sebastian’s face even while he struggled to keep his tone neutral.
Inez, she thought, if only you knew that he still carries the memory of those beautiful, laughing eyes and your horrific death. Would you be angry? Would you want him to let you go and learn to love again?
Isabel flicked through the blank pages that remained and on one page, unmarked in any other way, she found three words. Sebastian had written ‘Where is God?’ in such haste and fury that the ink from his pen nib had sputtered, casting drops of ink across the page like spots of black blood.
Isabel stared down at the page and traced the words with her finger — the cry of a man who had been forsaken. The words burned with his anguish and her fingers contracted. This little book held nothing but unhappy memories for the man who had consigned it to the flames. She hastily rewrapped it and laid it back in its hiding place and hoped Sebastian never knew of its existence.
The girl lay back on the pillows, watching her.
Isabel straightened her apron and said, ‘I have tired you. I’ll let you get some rest.’
Connie shook her head. ‘No, it has been nice to talk to you. I am so looking forward to going to Brantstone but I have so many questions to ask you. I’ve never even visited a grand house before.’
‘Then you really must get some rest and regain your strength and we will talk later. We must get you well, if you are to be at Brantstone in time for the ball.’
The girl’s eyes shone. ‘A ball? A proper ball? How wonderful. I shall certainly be well enough for that.’
As Isabel turned to go, Connie caught her hand. ‘Thank you for being Sebastian’s friend.‘’
Isabel laid her hand over the girl’s. ‘And yours, I hope.’
***
Sebastian removed his gloves and handed them to a footman, conscious that Bennet waited at the bottom of the stairs, hopping from one foot to the other.
‘Is something troubling you?’ he enquired of his batman.
‘May I have a word in private?’ Bennet’s eyes darted toward the footman.
‘Can it wait? It’s been a long journey and I would love a cup of tea.’ He would have liked an ale but he was learning.
Bennet didn’t answer and Sebastian sighed. ‘Very well. In my study, Bennet.’
Bennet closed the door behind them after a quick glance up and down the corridor. This nervousness in his long time comrade made Sebastian uneasy.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Bennet swallowed. ‘You know as how we think his late lordship was murdered? Well, I think there may have been another murder, before his.’
Sebastian straightened. ‘Good god, who?’
‘Thompson the groom… His girl, Amy.’
‘Didn’t she take her own life?’
‘Not according to Thompson. He said when they pulled her from the lake she had a head wound like she’d been hit on the back of the head. He told me she was happy. The man who was the father of her child was going to see her right. She didn’t have a reason to take her own life.’
Sebastian turned and walked over to the window. He stood looking out over the gardens to the lake, his arms folded and his right hand wrapped around his chin. Two murders within a few short months of each other. Coincidental? He thought not.
His reverie was short lived as the door burst open and Fanny came flying in with cries of, ‘Cousin Sebastian, you’re back! It’s a disaster.’
Sebastian turned to face the girl who stood sniffing in the middle of the room, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. She twisted a sodden kerchief in her hand, her full lips trembling.
‘What’s a disaster?’ he enquired.
Fanny gave a shuddering sob and subsided against the shoulder of her brother, who had followed her into the room.
‘The musicians we had booked to play at the ball have cancelled,’ Freddy said.
‘What are we going to do?’ Fanny sobbed into her brother’s coat.
Sebastian found himself unable to formulate a coherent response. He snorted and stomped from the room.
Chapter 17
Young Peter Thompson had been stationed at the gate to keep a watch for the coach and from the window of the study Sebastian could see the boy running up the drive towards the house. The ten long days since he had left Little Benning had dragged. The big house seemed empty without Isabel and the increasingly difficult task of avoiding Freddy and Fanny, with their plans for the ball, had made him feel like a hostage in his own home.
He had taken to immuring himself in the study with the door firmly closed or going for long tours of his estate. In his spare time he had been devouring books and journals on farming. He now knew all his tenants and their families by name and had discussed plans for improving their holdings, renovating their cottages and revolutionising the ancient farm practices.
He knew not all of his ideas would be greeted with universal enthusiasm but he had to admit to himself that, while he would rather bring them along of their own volition, for some of the older tenants, the power of position may be the only way he could ensure compliance. He was the lord and they would do as he ordered. It was a feeling not dissimilar to standing on a battlefield and giving an order to launch his troops into the thick of the fray, an exhilarating blend of fear and power. A heady mix to be used sparingly.
‘The coach’ll be here any minute,’ the boy announced breathlessly, meeting his lordship in the front hall.
Sebastian gave Peter a shilling and, adjusting his neck cloth, which seemed to have come loose, he strode out of the front door to wait for his brother and sister.
As the coach turned on to the forecourt, Matt leaned out of the window waving his hat, a grin from ear to ear.
‘Bas!’ he shouted.
A glimpse of Connie’s best bonnet also appeared at the window as she pulled her brother back inside the coach. Sebastian smiled as he heard her scolding him.
‘Matt, stop making such a fool of yourself.’
Lordly decorum quite forgotten, Sebastian bounded down the stone stairs to greet his siblings, lifting Connie from the coach before the footman had set down the steps and clasping Matt to him.
They were here at last. His family.
He turned back to the coach to lend his hand to Isabel. Her gloved fingers clasped his hand and she smiled down at him. He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, hoping the simple gesture conveyed the range of emotions from how very pleased he was to see
her to his thanks for everything she had done for his family.
‘Welcome home, Lady Somerton.’
She rewarded him with a smile and a barely perceptible acknowledging pressure on his own fingers.
‘It is good to be…home.’
‘You look very well,’ he heard himself saying, thinking as he spoke that a few weeks of homely cooking and bucolic living had given Isabel some colour in her pale cheeks and life in her eyes.
In the hallway, Connie spun on her heel, looking upwards at the mural of Diana and Actaeon sporting around the dome.
‘Oh, Bas, this is beautiful. Is it all really yours?’
‘Every stone and associated debt,’ Sebastian said with a laugh in his voice.
‘I am going to wake soon in my own bedroom in Little Benning and find this is all a dream,’ Connie said.
Sebastian put an arm around his sister’s shoulders, delighted to have her by his side at last. He wanted to show it all to her, share his good fortune with his brother and sister.
‘Wait until I show you the gallery and the stables. Did Lady Somerton tell you about her foal? Ah, Mrs Fletcher,’ he gestured for the housekeeper who hovered in the shadows of the stairs.
She came forward and bobbed a curtsey. ‘Miss Alder, Mister Alder, welcome to Brantstone. You must be tired after your journey.’ She gestured towards the stairs. ‘Your rooms are ready.’
‘Oh I’m not tired at all,’ Connie said and looked up at her brother. ‘Bas, I’ve never known anything like it! The best room at the inn last night and the inn keeper treating Matt and I like we were royalty.’
Sebastian beamed and turned to Isabel. ‘I must apologise for my siblings. I hope you are not too worn out by their company.’
Isabel met his eyes. ‘Not at all. I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the last fortnight.’
Impulsively, he took her hand, now free of the gloves, and bent and kissed her fingers.
‘Thank you for your care, Lady Somerton. I am forever in your debt.’
‘Well, well, who do we have here?’
Freddy and Fanny appeared, standing side by side at the door to the library, and the cheerful mood seemed to dissipate. Sebastian silently cursed the Lynchs. Their continued presence felt like a blight on the house and it took a monumental effort to keep the ice from his voice as he effected the introductions.
Lord Somerton’s Heir Page 16