Clarissa turned and gave a questioning look. “Pa?”
It was beyond the child’s understanding, of course. Some of her playfellows had fathers. Others did not. That was simply the way it was. Susan Kittery had once innocently asked after Clarissa’s papa and been told by her mother, in both Clarissa and Sarah’s hearing, that Mr. Fairfax—if, indeed, there had ever been such a person—had likely been a scoundrel. Sarah had said nothing to contradict her.
But she realized now that she could maintain her silence no longer. Emily deserved to know something of the history of the woman to whom she had connected herself. She deserved to know where she was headed.
And Clarissa deserved to know her father.
Sarah cleared her throat softly. “I believe, Emily, there are a few things I should tell you before we reach the inn.”
* * *
When he opened the carriage door, he was caught full in the chest by a curly-haired cannonball weighing all of two stone, and he leaned backward in surprise.
But it was not until she spoke that he almost lost his balance.
“Papa!” Clarissa shouted, clutching his neck and babbling about his horse, the carriage horses, all the horses in the inn yard.
He ought to have expected it, he supposed. The child could hardly go on calling him by his Christian name. And there was a joy he had not anticipated in hearing Clarissa call him “Papa.”
But the joy he felt was accompanied by a curious sort of pressure in his chest that was almost, but not quite, pain. Would taking her away from Haverhythe really protect either of them from heartache?
Miss Dawlish exited next, ducking her head and dipping into a curtsy so low she nearly toppled into the muck. “Yer honor,” she mumbled.
So, his days as “Lieutenant Fairfax” were over. Well, he could not say he was sorry. It had been a foolish, dangerous game to play, and he was lucky to have escaped with only a few more scars than he’d started with.
Finally, Sarah passed through the carriage door, without touching his hand or meeting his eye.
“I’ve arranged for rooms for the night, and a meal of some sort,” he told her. “But, as it won’t be ready for another half an hour, I propose we take a walk into the village.” He gestured them away from the bustle of the inn yard. “Clarissa must be tired of being cooped up.”
“Oh, aye,” Emily Dawlish eagerly agreed, taking Clarissa by the hand. “An’ I’m dyin’ to stretch my legs.”
With obvious reluctance, Sarah took his offered arm and they set off toward the village green. “It was kind of you to suggest a stroll. It is always hard on children to be confined,” she said after a moment, nodding toward Clarissa, who had gamboled ahead with Miss Dawlish and was now spinning circles on the green until she collapsed in a dizzy, laughing heap. “But you needn’t walk with us, after riding all day,” she added, releasing his arm.
She clearly intended it as a dismissal, but St. John walked on beside her nonetheless. After another stretch of silence, she spoke again, but it seemed she had decided to move beyond mere pleasantries. “How long is it since you were last at Lynscombe, my lord?”
“More than fifteen years,” he replied without hesitation.
He could not see her expression, as her face was hidden from his gaze by the brim of her bonnet. But her surprise was evident in her voice. “So long as that? I wonder you wish to return now.”
Truth be told, he did not. His feelings for Lynscombe were . . . well, he imagined they were not unlike the memories inspired by the items Sarah kept in that trunk of hers. Precious and painful all at once. He would rather keep them locked away entirely.
“I passed a happy childhood there, ma’am.” Or part of one. “Clarissa will, I hope, do the same.”
“And will I—?” He heard again the convincing catch in her voice, the same sound that had captured his ear that night on the quay. “Will I be permitted to share any of it with her?”
He stopped walking. “Is that your wish?”
“Oh, yes. It is.” The slightest hesitation. “But will you—?”
“I shall return to London as soon as you both are settled at Lynscombe.”
Although she was no longer touching him, he could feel the tension ebb from Sarah’s body. “For how long, my lord?”
He answered her whisper with firmness. “Forever, ma’am. My family owns several houses. I see no particular need for us to share one. So, as we have been doing for the past three years, I shall live my life and you may live yours—in Hampshire, if it suits you. Lady Clarissa Sutliffe, however, will remain at Lynscombe until it is time for her to enter Society.”
It was not the offer he had been on the verge of making just last night.
Twice now, fate had intervened and prevented him from making a rash mistake where Sarah was concerned. Three years past, just as he had begun to realize that she was not at all the sort of woman he had imagined his father would choose for him, had begun to feel some spark of interest in her, had begun to suspect—no, fear—that he could care for her, she had been found in the arms of another man and then disappeared in a cloud of scandal. And he had been glad of the reprieve.
The past week had shown him he was still not out of danger, however. There was something undeniably attractive to him about the woman he had discovered in Haverhythe—her extraordinary musical gift, her concern for the people of the village, her fierce love for her daughter. It suggested a deeply passionate nature of the sort he could never have imagined in the woman he had married. And for a moment, he had allowed himself to be drawn to that passion. Like a moth to the flame.
Fortunately, he had stumbled over her trunk in the alley behind Primrose Cottage before he could suggest that they try to make something of their marriage. She had been going to leave him without a word, disappear again, just as she had once before.
He ought to have been relieved by the discovery. While she might not be a thief, she still was not to be trusted. If he had allowed himself to grow closer to her or the child, he inevitably would have been hurt.
Yet he could not fairly describe what he felt now as relief.
He heard Sarah’s lips part, heard her quick intake of breath. At first, though, no words came. Finally, she said, “You do not intend to petition for a divorce, then.”
“Do you mean to present me with the requisite proof?” he asked coldly.
“You refer to the gems, I suppose,” she said, glancing up at him at last.
“Or something else.” Knowing her eyes were upon him, he allowed his gaze to travel across the darkening green and come to rest on the child.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head bow. “No, my lord.”
“Then it seems I have little choice. Ours will not be the first marriage lived separately, nor the last, I’ll wager.”
“I suppose not,” she agreed, a note of something very like sorrow in her voice. “And you will not . . . wish for an heir?”
He stiffened. Everywhere, God help him. “If such a need becomes pressing, rest assured, my lady: You will be the first to know.”
Emily Dawlish chose that moment to take Clarissa’s hand and begin their ascent of the grassy slope. Seizing the opportunity, St. John gave a brusque bow. “I trust you will find the arrangements at the inn to your satisfaction. We leave again at first light,” he said, as he turned and walked away.
Chapter 17
He had not anticipated having to face a welcoming party when they arrived at Lynscombe Manor. Heavy with exhaustion, he wanted nothing more than to disappear into his rooms until he had had a chance to take stock of his situation and his surroundings.
But that, it seemed, was not to be.
“Fairfax!” His stepmother’s girlish voice rang out against the lofty ceiling and marble-tiled floors of the entry hall. “Really, my dear, it’s taken an age for you to arrive.”
He had written to tell her of his plan to go on to Hampshire from Devonshire, but he had no notion she would take it for an invit
ation to join him. “It was not at all necessary for you to come, ma’am,” he replied as he handed his coat and hat to Jarrell, the butler. “I know how you feel about the country.”
“But your father simply insisted.”
St. John rocked back on his heels, his flight to the stairway arrested. “Father is here?”
“Oh yes.” Her eager nod set the lace on her cap aflutter. “When I told him of your letter, he was determined to meet you here.”
He did not want to be fussed at by his stepmother.
And he most assuredly did not want to speak to his father.
Before he could escape, however, his father came striding from the back of the house, sporting hunting boots and a long drab duster. “Here at last, are you, Fairfax?” When his pale eyes fell on Sarah and Clarissa, they betrayed no surprise. St. John wondered how much his stepmother had revealed—and how near it came to the truth.
“Welcome to Lynscombe, Lady Fairfax,” he said, stepping toward her and stretching out his hands for hers. “And this must be . . .”
“Clarissa,” Sarah supplied. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, as if to seal off words that demanded to be spoken, but really, what more could be said?
His father dropped to one knee to inspect the child, his eyes scanning the tiny face in the same desperate search for some familiar feature that St. John had already undertaken. Followed, no doubt, by the same disappointment.
But at the sight of Clarissa’s curly locks and violet eyes, his father seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Welcome to you, too, my dear.”
Clarissa made a shy curtsy while still clutching Emily Dawlish’s hand.
“Jarrell,” his stepmother ordered the butler, “have the child and her things taken to the nursery.”
“Yes, milady,” the white-haired retainer said with a bow. Apparently deciding that Sarah and Emily were among Clarissa’s “things,” Jarrell ushered them all toward the servants’ stairs in the rear.
St. John opened his mouth to correct the error, but his stepmother prevented him. “I’m so glad you’re here, Fairfax,” she said, threading her arm through his. “You know I dread ennui above all things, and Estley has some silly notion of staying for weeks—”
“Thought it might be nice to shoot my own birds for a change,” his father interjected.
“And he insisted I come, too. Really, what could be duller? But thankfully Miss Harrington offered to accompany me,” she added, with a rather uncertain-looking smile.
“Eliza is here?”
“At Wyldewood,” she explained. “But I’m sure she’ll be here every chance she has.”
He nodded. Lord Harrington’s estate was only a few miles away.
When the departing footsteps of Sarah, Emily, and Clarissa had faded, his father cut short their conversation. “We need to talk. My study, Fairfax.”
The old resistance to his father’s control flared sharply in St. John’s chest. But it was a conversation that could not be avoided. After a moment’s hesitation, he followed his father down the corridor, although he certainly had not forgotten the way, despite the time that had elapsed.
The Marquess of Estley’s study was a purely masculine preserve of heavy furniture and dark wainscot. A shaft of fading afternoon sunlight sliced through a crystal decanter on the desktop but had otherwise little success in piercing the gloom.
He associated the place most with the punishments he had sometimes had to face, when Jarrell could not cover up his misdeeds or his mother’s indulgence could not prevail. Stepping over the threshold, he felt as if he were stepping back in time, as if Father’s summons had the power to transform him into a lonely, powerless boy once again.
They stood with the desk between them while his father lit a lamp, the flame flaring up from below to cast shadows beneath his eyes that made him look suddenly older, sadder. To his shock, his father lifted the decanter and sloshed a measure of brandy into two glasses. He handed one to his son as he motioned him into a chair and then perched on the edge of his desk, raising his own glass in a sort of salute.
“Welcome home, Fairfax,” he said and drank.
Coming from his father, the words bordered on effusive. But then Lynscombe was the only place where St. John had ever felt any sense of closeness to the man. Over the years, the distance between them had grown insurmountable—so wide that even the breadth of the Atlantic had mattered very little.
When he said nothing in reply, his father asked, “Well?”
St. John hesitated, contemplating how best to approach his father’s question, wondering what traps lay hidden beneath its treacherous breadth. “I hardly know where to begin, sir,” he said at last.
“At the beginning, if you please.”
Although he was sorely tempted to begin with his father’s insistence that he marry a fortune—or perhaps even further back, with his father’s decision to marry a spendthrift, he thought better of it. “Your wife has, I hope, told you where I have been, and perhaps even why.”
“The story about how she was blackmailed into helping Lady Fairfax escape to some fishing village in Devonshire, you mean? Yes, she did.” He cleared his throat gruffly. “With some, ah, encouragement. And did you find the Sutliffe sapphires there?”
“No, Father,” he confessed with a shake of his head, pushing away the unwelcome memory of Sarah’s sad, searching eyes as she passed him the key to her nearly empty trunk. “I did not. In fact, I have begun to doubt they were ever in her possession.”
“I can’t say as I’m surprised,” his father interjected. “I always suspected that soldier chap, myself. But Amelia would have it that Sarah was the guilty party.” He paused to take another swallow of brandy. “Well, blackmail or no, what matters now is that you’ve found your wife, and the damage done by these little . . . adventures can be repaired.”
St. John swirled the liquid in his glass but did not taste it. “I shall do my best. Despite the uncertainty surrounding Clarissa,” he ventured, “I have determined to accept her as my own.”
A momentary frown of surprise creased the space between his father’s brows. “Uncertainty?”
“About her parentage. No man could feel certain after seeing what I had seen—what we all saw—that night.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the memory of Sarah in another man’s arms. “And you must agree that the decision to keep the child’s birth a secret bodes ill for my wife’s fidelity.”
“My God,” his father whispered, almost to himself. “Can it be that you don’t remember? I forget that your dear mother must be little more than a shadow to you now.”
His dear mother? The woman his father had replaced in a matter of months? St. John thumped his glass onto the corner of the desk. “I assure you I have not forgotten her.”
His father rose and walked toward a tapestry that adorned the wall opposite the desk. “I did not mean you had forgotten her. But from what you’ve said, you cannot, I think, remember this,” he explained, pushing aside the tapestry with a surprisingly unsteady hand.
Behind the curtain hung a small portrait he could not recall ever having seen. Although the occasion for the painting no doubt had been to celebrate the birth of the child, the heir, the new mother clearly had captivated the artist’s attention. She was seated in the center, the hems of her gown puddled at her feet, her slender arms wrapped lovingly around her infant son.
Around him.
The image of his mother he carried in his heart and in his head had faded and blurred with the passing of time. In the years since her death, he had seen no other picture, had imagined them all destroyed by a man determined to erase her memory from his life.
Her smile was demure but her cheeks were rosy, the perfect complement to the riot of brownish-blond curls piled high on her head. He could swear his mother’s tinkling laugh and gentle touch flooded over him, along with a wave of guilt that anything about her could ever have been forgotten.
Especially, of course, the mischievous sparkle in he
r remarkable violet eyes.
Clarissa’s eyes.
It was all the proof of her parentage Society would require. And as for his own need for certainty? Well, a part of him had known the truth all along. But if the revelation did not shock, it did not precisely bring comfort, either.
“That beautiful little girl of yours will have you wrapped around her finger soon enough,” his father cautioned, an unaccustomed sentimentality warming his voice. “Love of a child makes a man do foolish things, my boy.”
St. John bristled. “What would you know about loving a child, Father?” He felt little compunction at flinging those sharp words at last, and less satisfaction in seeing them hit their mark.
A stony silence followed, broken only when his father asked, “Why did you come here?”
“I might just as easily enquire what kept you away,” St. John snapped back. “It seemed to me a suitable place to raise a—my child.”
“You mean to stay, then.”
“No. I cannot.” Taking up his glass again, he traced the faceted edges with his fingertip. “My wife may be innocent of the particular crimes of which she was accused three years ago, but I find that we are still quite—incompatible. It will be best for all parties if we continue to live separately. Sarah will stay here with Clarissa. I shall return to town.”
“Unthinkable,” his father said, washing down the assertion with the remaining contents of his glass, sounding once more like the man St. John remembered.
“That is not for you to say.”
“Tell me, Fairfax,” he asked after a long silent moment, his pale eyes focused on the empty glass in his hand, “how much of the village did you see on your arrival?”
St. John started at the abrupt change of subject. “None at all. I came on horseback, through the western meadow.”
“Well, in the morning, go for an early ride—around the estate, through the town.” He lifted the decanter, gesturing with it. “Then tell me again how you intend to dispose of Lady Fairfax.”
“What has she to do with this?” St. John demanded.
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