“This is the reason why I’m here, to discover if we’re kin or not,” Jo said, unwilling to offer more.
The sun had broken through the clouds during the service, and they found the curate standing in the midst of a small assembly outside. Jo decided they must be the families he’d promised to introduce to them today. Since last night, however, it was only the Sellar family that she cared to meet.
“Do you know which one of those people are Mr. and Mrs. Sellar?” she asked Mrs. Clark.
“The missus is homebound these days. Turned an ankle in the garden a fortnight ago. As far as her husband, let me see.” She squinted at the group and shook her head. “Can’t find him, m’lady. But perhaps Mr. Clark recalls if the gentleman was attending today or not.”
She turned to ask her husband and brightened, noticing a man coming out of the church.
“Just looking for ye, Mr. Sellar,” Mrs. Clark called to him. “This English lady and the captain here come all the way from Rayneford to make yer acquaintance.”
Wynne stopped next to Jo. But the older gentleman’s immediate reaction told them no introductions were needed.
“Josephine Sellar? Truly? I don’t believe it. It can’t be you!”
* * *
Cuffe saw the two old people roll up in their ancient carriage. When, a few minutes later, a footman announced the arrival, Dr. McKendry’s sudden frown told him trouble had come knocking.
The doctor asked him to stay with Mr. Cameron while he took the guests up to the captain’s office to speak with them.
The bookkeeper was busy with his accounting books, so Cuffe went downstairs. Listening to the muttering between the attendants, he heard the name Barton mentioned. When he asked, one of the former sailors told him it was the mother and uncle, and he’d be “best off tacking well away of ’em, for a storm’s a-blowin’ in.”
Mr. Barton was the reason Lady Jo had come to the Abbey, and the sweet old man sketched her likeness every day.
Treading lightly on his way up the stairs, he heard the sound of loud voices coming from the captain’s office, and he edged toward the open door, pressing himself against the wall.
A woman’s harsh tone pierced the quiet of the hallway. “We didn’t give him into your care to put him at risk, Dr. McKendry.”
“Mrs. Barton, Graham,” the doctor said. “Taking him now would jeopardize the advances he’s made. The accidents that occurred—”
“Don’t try to pass off what’s happened as accidents,” she hissed. “We’ve heard the truth, so don’t try lying about it. They were attacks, pure and simple. A madman going after Charles while he was sleeping. And now I hear the lunatic is still housed in the same room, free to attack again.”
“That patient was provoked by someone who has since run off,” the doctor explained.
Cuffe’s chin sank to his chest in shame. He was the person responsible for what happened to Mr. Barton, having allowed himself to be tricked by Abram. And now Dr. McKendry was being blamed.
“And then,” the grating voice scratched out, “we find out my son was nearly drowned, cast into the fish pond by yet another patient, as you call them.”
“Nothing of the kind happened,” Dr. McKendry asserted hotly. “Mr. Barton jumped into a waist-deep pond after someone who’d fallen in—”
“Two attacks and you can’t protect him.”
Cuffe remembered the chaos he and the captain came upon when they rode back from the village that morning. Mr. Barton had gone in after Lady Jo because he thought she might be drowning. He cared for her. He was worried. Since when was trying to save someone’s life considered an attack? These people knew nothing.
“The progress your son has made has been astounding,” the doctor asserted. “Not only has his health improved dramatically, his mind is—”
“Don’t you be talking of progress,” she barked, cutting him off. “We’ve had enough. We’re taking my son with us today. We shan’t be leaving him at the mercy of vultures. The asylum in Aberdeen is ready for him, and they have bona fide keepers there.”
“Sending him there would be a terrible mistake,” the doctor argued. “Do you know how they treat their patients?”
“We’ve made all the arrangements,” the woman announced in cold indifference.
“Charles will be beaten. Mutilated. Starved. Dunked in ice cold water,” the doctor exclaimed. “They’ll tie him to a chair that’s been hung from the ceiling, hoist him up and spin him until he vomits, wets himself, or defecates. And then they’ll beat him for that.”
Cuffe shivered, recalling the brutality on the plantations. He’d heard so many stories from the folk that escaped. He’d seen their scars. Their missing fingers and ears. It made him ill to see his own people exposed to such treatment, and he didn’t want Mr. Barton to be treated that way either.
“Graham, pray speak with Mrs. Barton,” Dr. McKendry pleaded. “Surely you see that moving him now is the wrong thing to do.”
“She is my nephew’s mother,” the old man said flatly. “Neither you nor I can say we know what’s best. She’s the one to decide.”
The doctor was not giving up. “Mrs. Barton, patients who are sent there rarely if ever recover enough to rejoin society and their families. Your son would be lost to you forever. Surely you don’t want that.”
“Save your breath,” Mrs. Barton ordered. “They’ve agreed to take him, and we mean to remove him from this place. The treatment my son has endured here cannot be referred to as anything but evil, and once he’s been saved from your . . .”
Cuffe had heard enough, and he backed away from the door. They were correct downstairs. Something horrible was going to happen, and Dr. McKendry was alone to face them. Lady Jo cared about Mr. Barton, and she wasn’t here. The captain wasn’t here either.
It was up to Cuffe to help.
* * *
Josephine Sellar.
The older gentleman’s unguarded exclamation affirmed what Jo had already come to accept in her heart. She now knew her mother’s family name, who her people were, where she came from.
Mr. Sellar was astonished, but he wanted to know more about her. Jo desired no public spectacle, however, and as the curate and the other families joined them, she asked Mr. Sellar to wait so they could discuss the matter further in private. None of the others appeared to recognize Jo or even understand what the curiosity was about.
Wynne asked permission of Mr. Kealy for the use of his cottage. And as Jo started up the hill with Mr. Sellar, she was relieved to see him head off Mrs. Clark and the others.
“Perhaps I only see the resemblance because the curate mentioned before the service that a visitor in the village was asking about someone named Josephine,” the old man said once they settled in at the cottage. “Too many years have passed. Memories fade. But when I first looked into your face, I swore I saw her.”
Jo had left the door open, and Wynne ducked his head and entered. She was glad. She needed his strength, his astuteness.
“If I may ask, how was Josephine Sellar related to you?”
“A cousin, twice removed. Not close enough to warrant guardianship when she became an orphan, nor close enough to inherit when she died.”
Her mother was an orphan. Of course, Jo thought, understanding the poverty she’d been enduring those last days of her life. She was grateful when Wynne asked about the parents and how they’d died.
“I was a soldier, off fighting in America back then, so I wasn’t here to know or help,” he said, staring at a streak of light illuminating the stone floor. “What I heard after, though, was that fever ran through the village. It took some lives, including Josephine’s parents.”
“And what happened to her after the parents died?” Wynne asked.
“She was left no pauper, certainly,” Sellar said, his gaze swinging around to them. “She had land and a great house, and once she came of the age, it would have been hers to keep. And it should have been, with Ainsley her guardian.”
/> “Ainsley?” she asked.
“Ainsley Barton. A great, kind-hearted man, bless his soul. He was brother to Josephine’s mother. A tragedy, it was, that he died a year later.”
Barton. Jo met Wynne’s gaze. There was a family connection.
“Do you know a Charles Barton?” Wynne asked.
“Of course, Charles was Ainsley’s son. Another good man, cut from the same cloth as the father.”
Cousins, Jo thought, emotions welling up in her. They were cousins. Charles’s sketches of her mother. They had to know each other for all of their lives.
Her mind returned to Mrs. Barton’s denials. And to Graham’s response. They said Jo resembled no one they knew. But Ainsley Barton was her mother’s guardian and uncle. She must have been well known to them.
“Did Charles become Josephine’s guardian when his father died?” Wynne asked.
He shook his head and his expression showed his disappointment. “No, that couldn’t have happened. Charles was close in age to Josephine. Maybe two or three years older. No, Graham became her guardian after his brother passed. He’s the one who has made all the decisions about Tilmory Castle since. He was the one I bought the Sellar property from when I came back from the war.”
Jo tried to speak, but her voice couldn’t push past the knot in her throat.
“Why Graham?” Wynne asked. “How could he sell you her property?”
The old gentleman looked at Jo. “We were told . . . I was told . . . Josephine drowned in the big flood. I don’t know why or how she came to be in Garloch. But a gravestone is sitting out there in the kirkyard with her name on it. I can show you, if you care to see it.”
Chapter 20
They found the gravestone marking the final resting place of Josephine Sellar near the wall along the river path. It was plain and similar to a score of others around it, but Wynne watched as Jo studied the markings. A name. A birth. A death.
He wondered what poor soul had been buried there in the place of her mother, and as they stood there, Jo murmured a quiet prayer. As he listened, the thought crossed his mind that someone else may have gone on living, never knowing what had become of their daughter or sister or wife . . . or mother.
In the curate’s cottage, Jo had not mentioned what she suspected to be her connection with the Sellar family. When she said nothing to the old gentleman, Wynne had followed her lead and remained silent. He knew as it stood, she had no proof of anything, only a handful of drawings and a series of possible coincidences. Still, he guessed that Mr. Sellar knew the truth.
Back in the village, she visited with Mrs. Clark while Wynne searched out the curate and compensated him for his time and efforts.
They left Garloch at noon and for a long time Jo sat quietly beside him, her head resting against his shoulder and their fingers entwined. He knew she had a great deal to think about. This journey had been an emotional whirlwind, and they both were feeling its profound effect.
“Did Mrs. Clark tell you more?” he asked. “Anything that you didn’t know?”
“She told me she was living in the village at the time of the flood. She was newly married then,” Jo told him. “It was an awful time, she said. The town was full of folk passing through, seeking some place after being turned out of their homes by the landlords. There was a large encampment along the river. As Mr. Kealy told us, when the flood came, so many people were caught in it and carried off by the waters. It took weeks to find some of them and many were beyond recognition. Families were forced to guess at the identities of the bodies.”
“That doesn’t excuse Graham’s false identification of your mother.”
“No, it doesn’t. Nothing does,” she said, her words tinged with anger. “My mother was his ward. She was his kin, his own sister’s daughter. But he failed her. Perhaps worse than failed her. When she showed up a month later in the Borders, she was frightened. She would not even tell anyone the name of her family in the Highlands. She gave me to a stranger rather than asking her to send me back to her own people.”
Pregnant and alone. Even now, debilitated by a head injury, Charles Barton appeared to care deeply for the young woman he’d lost. But from what Wynne knew of the older man’s history, during that time he’d had a commission in the navy. Questions rose in his mind as to the nature of Barton’s relationship with Josephine Sellar. More to the point, who fathered the woman sitting beside him now? The woman he loved.
“Last week, Graham and Mrs. Barton saw me in that ward, and they both denied any kinship vehemently. Why?” she asked, frustration and ire evident in her voice. “All they needed to say was the same thing I heard from Mrs. Clark and Mr. Seller—that I resemble someone they’d once known. It would have been enough to put me off and bury the truth. So why reject me?”
Because they had something to hide, Wynne thought.
“Men do vile things for money,” he replied. “Graham saw to it years ago that Josephine Sellar was declared dead. In doing so, he took possession of her property and sold it. Right now, he controls the estate at Tilmory Castle. With Charles Barton in an asylum—or dead, as he nearly was when they dumped him at the Abbey—Graham continues to reap the benefits. And then you arrive. What if Charles and Josephine were more than cousins? They were both young when she became his father’s ward. We have no proof that they were married, but what if they were and Graham knows it? You would be the heir to everything.”
“We have no proof of anything,” she said, not denying his assertion. “But what man draws the same woman’s face, day after day after day?”
A man in love, Wynne thought. “According to Mr. Sellar back in Garloch, the farm was to be inherited by your mother. The estate was provisioned to allow for a female heir. Perhaps the same condition exists for Tilmory Castle. Why would Graham worry unless he thought you would inherit once Charles is gone? He has a great deal to lose unless you go back to your life in the south.”
“But I don’t care about Tilmory Castle!” Jo burst out. “Or the money, or any of that. I . . . I’m only trying to find out the truth of what happened to my mother.”
Wynne drew Jo closer to his chest and pressed a kiss on her brow. “I know that, but Graham doesn’t. And I don’t think he’d believe you if you told him.”
They rode in silence for a few moments until she spoke, calm again. “You believe it’s a possibility that Charles Barton and my mother were married.”
“We found nothing in Garloch, but if she married in any of these parishes, we might find some record of it in the offices of the bishop in Aberdeen.”
“Married or not, my mother suffered,” she said fretfully. “What would drive her to leave the Highlands?”
“I think Graham and Mrs. Barton need to answer that. She was in their care. But Charles Barton may know something, as well, if he ever improves enough to share it.”
She nestled closer and tucked her head beneath his chin. “Charles Barton. Could he really be my father? And will I ever know for certain?”
Jo’s hand wandered innocently down the front of his coat, and his loins tightened.
“Whatever answers present themselves, you will learn them with me at your side. For that is where I vow to remain . . . except at this particular moment.”
He could wait no longer. Wynne moved swiftly to the seat across from her.
Yesterday, Jo agreed to marry him. Last night, overwhelming passion consumed them. Neither had slept at all. Every time they thought themselves satisfied and spent, it took only a look, a caress, and they were young lovers once again.
She looked at him questioningly.
“Which hand?” he asked, holding out two closed fists.
* * *
Jo was satisfied with what they’d discovered about her mother at Garloch, but she was also disheartened at the lack of prospects for learning anything else. Wynne read her thoughts. He knew what she was feeling. And here he was, trying to cheer her up.
“What are you doing, Captain Melfort?” she as
ked, smiling.
“Which hand?”
“If you intend to distract me, you’ve already succeeded,” she said, looking into his handsome face.
“Don’t be a coward, Lady Pennington. Pick one.”
Jo traveled back in time to a warm evening in London. To the night they met.
“You’re being more formal than the last time, Captain,” she drawled, biting her lip as she studied her options. “The right hand.”
As she’d expected, it was empty. When he extended the left hand in her direction, she saw the right move covertly into the pocket of his coat. This was preposterous, but suddenly she felt young and playful.
“What are you hiding in there?” she cried out, throwing herself into his arms and trying to dig her own hand into his pocket.
“Lady Jo, your impatience astounds me.”
“I’m glad.” She laughed.
“And I’m shocked by your forwardness.”
“Which delights me even more.”
Smiling, he gathered her firmly onto his lap, and she met his gaze, reveling in the heat and masculinity he exuded. She wanted him. She wanted to make love to him right now in this carriage. And from what she felt through the layers of their clothing, he wanted it too.
“After,” he said, reading her mind. He laid his right fist on her lap. “Which hand?”
If he had a rosebud in there, she thought, he was truly a magician. Jo sighed, turned the hand over, and pried open his fingers. There in his palm, an intricately designed gold band gleamed. She looked at him perplexed, but for only a moment. Then her heart soared as she slipped it on.
“I was hoping you’d allow me to put this on your finger when we marry for the first time at the church in Rayneford. The vicar will be officiating.”
“Marry for the first time?” she asked, mystified. They’d already spoken of going to Baronsford, having Wynne’s family meet the Penningtons, and then planning their wedding. She reminded him of that now.
He shook his head. “That will be our second wedding. And we could have a third or fourth as well, if you want,” he told her. “After last night, it became clear to me that there’ll be no waiting. No long engagement. I’m yours as you’re mine. In fact, you told me yourself last night that your younger brother, Gregory, and his wife were wed twice. Do you think I would have you slighted in any way?”
It Happened in the Highlands Page 18