“The Viscountess Fairfax?” she echoed uncertainly.
“You may have found ways to avoid the title in Haverhythe, Sarah,” he said, casting a disparaging glance over her black dress, “but I assure you that in Lynscombe you must expect to hear it often. And to suit your behavior to its worth.”
Sarah straightened her spine. “When, my lord, have I ever done otherwise?”
The flick of a crop against his palm made her flinch. He was dressed for riding, she realized when she finally allowed her eyes to focus on him. Correction, he had just returned from a ride. Mud speckled his boots, sweat dampened his hair. And the subtly exotic scent of his cologne was now tempered with heat and horse. He had risen early, ridden hard by the look of things, and was returning to his chambers to freshen up before breakfast.
His chambers. The Viscount Fairfax’s chambers. Which must be very near to . . .
She glanced at the door through which the footman had vanished with her trunk.
Oh.
She could not hide her blush, but it did not seem to matter, for he was not looking at her. His pale eyes were locked on his hands. Yet she sensed, somehow, that his own thoughts were traveling the same ground as hers.
“Do you ride, ma’am?” he asked after an awkward moment.
“No, my lord. Papa called it a country pursuit.”
Another snap of leather against flesh. “Very well, then. We shall walk.” And without another word, he set off down the corridor, in the opposite direction from which Sarah had come.
With a tug on her shawl to pull it into place around her shoulders, she followed.
* * *
Avoiding her gaze, he set off around the corner of the house, marching through the frostbitten remains of what had once been a formal garden, and into unkempt wilderness. His eyes sought and found a once-familiar path, although it was now so overgrown as to be almost invisible. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of Sarah’s stumbling footsteps and labored breaths. With a muttered oath, he slowed and offered her his arm.
Still, they did not speak.
After a few moments, they crested the small bluff overlooking the English Channel. Here, only a few scrub trees, those strong enough to withstand the salt air, dotted the landscape. He stood beside her, listening to the seabirds and studying the seemingly random pattern of waves as they built, next upon last, each erasing evidence of what had come before it, like cherished dreams swept away by haunting memories.
He did not know why he had invited her—perhaps ordered would be a better word—to walk with him. What he needed was a moment’s peace, something time spent with Sarah was unlikely to offer. Something his morning ride had certainly not provided.
It had been a far cry from his recollection of the place. But he knew his boyhood memory could not be trusted. Perhaps in truth, Lynscombe had not changed in the slightest since he had seen it last. Perhaps it had always been run-down and neglected and in need of capital to shore it up.
Well, he had it in his power to change things now.
For better or worse.
Thirty thousand pounds would allow mortgages to be paid, repairs to be done, improvements to be made, and then some. He could save Lynscombe, if he agreed to resurrect his marriage. If he were willing to play along with Pevensey’s scheme and tell his wife he could not bear to be separated from her after all.
But that way, he was quite sure, lay madness. If a few days together had weakened his resistance, what might a month do? Or a year?
Experience had taught him that not caring at all was far preferable to caring too much. And he did not want to care—about Lynscombe, Clarissa, any of it. Especially not Sarah.
He did not want to care, but it was growing more and more difficult to deny that he did.
When he dragged a shuddering breath through his nostrils, she darted a glance at him. “Whatever it is you have to tell me, my lord, it cannot be worse than your silence.”
“Are you certain of that, my lady?” he shot back.
“No.”
Her voice was so soft that if he had not been looking at her, he would not have known that she had spoken. He walked a few steps farther. “The path continues along this ridge and goes down to the water,” he explained, indicating a well-worn trail cut from the limestone, which led down to a sheltered stretch of the strand. From the cliff’s edge, they could watch the incoming tide carve out rivers and islands among the sand. A dark line along the chalky face of the bluff marked high water, when the little spit of beachhead would disappear entirely. “Once the favored haunt of a little boy who fancied himself a pirate.”
Cautiously, she craned her neck to peer down to the beach and shivered. “It is difficult to imagine you playing here. Growing up here.”
“It was the only home I knew until I was almost ten years old.”
“When your mother died,” she ventured, more certainty than question in her voice.
He wanted no one’s pity. Certainly not Sarah’s. “Yes. Father married the present Lady Estley soon afterward—too soon, some might say,” he acknowledged, striving to sound matter-of-fact. “My stepmother preferred—prefers—London and Sutliffe House at all seasons. And my father has been content to indulge her. Once upon a time, I imagined . . .” He slashed at the heavy beard of a stalk of grass with his crop, scattering its seeds to the wind. “Clearly, he cares nothing for this place.”
“Perhaps there is another explanation for his absence.” She paused. “Forgive me for asking this, but did your mother die here?”
“She did.” After so many years, the wound ought to have healed, but beneath Sarah’s prodding it still felt achingly raw. “She fell down the nursery stairs after coming to the schoolroom to listen to my lessons one morning. Her neck was broken,” he said, pushing out the words over the sound of Sarah’s gasp of horror. “And—and the child she had been carrying was lost, too. I knew nothing of that at the time, of course.”
“Your father’s grief must have been terrible.”
“Grief, ma’am?” he scoffed.
“Is it not possible that your father left because he could not bear to stay in the place where she had been?” she pressed. “Perhaps by leaving he hoped to escape his grief . . . and his guilt.”
He recalled his father’s trembling hand as it drew back the tapestry that reserved his late wife’s youthful beauty for his eyes alone. Thought of his father’s choice not to occupy the suite of rooms he had once shared with St. John’s mother. Grief? Guilt? He thrust those memories aside. “You are determined to persist in this delusion that one’s past can be outrun.”
“No,” she demurred. “Although certainly one may be tempted to try.”
“A grieving man would have observed a decent period of mourning,” he insisted, his voice rising in spite of himself. “A grieving man would not have married the first silly female who threw herself into his path, and then ordered his son to call her ‘Mama.’ ”
“He might have,” she countered gently. “Grief has been known to drive men to madness. I can well imagine a father hoping to allay a young child’s anguish in just the way you describe—flawed though the means undoubtedly would be.”
“I assure you, he disdains such weakness.”
Come, come, Fairfax, you are nearly a man. And men do not cry.
“Yes, of course.” She paused. “Most men do.”
He wanted to ask what she meant by that remark, but he feared he already knew. Another heavy silence fell between them, masked by the sound of wind and waves. Turning his gaze back to the water, he said at last, “I could never have believed, when I was a boy here, that I would one day grow up to see a pirate in the flesh.”
“In the West Indies.” The words were mumbled, as if her lips had suddenly gone numb. Antigua and Lynscombe were now tangled together for him in ways he was not sure he could explain. But Sarah seemed to need no explanation. “It changed you, that place.”
“Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. “The place. And the
people.”
When he had first arrived at Harper’s Hill, Edward Cary had looked him up and down with considerable doubt, his eyes lighting on the angry-looking wound that ran down St. John’s cheek, still red from the fiery sear of Brice’s blade where it had opened his flesh, the sting and tug of sheep’s gut where Murray’s needle had closed it again.
“Have you any skills we need here?”
“No,” St. John had been forced to confess. “But I—I do not require much in the way of wages. I simply need—”
“Occupation?” Cary had supplied the word with a knowing look.
“Yes.”
Much later, when St. John had announced his intention to return to England, Cary had studied his face a long moment, his eyes lingering over the thin, white scar, the most obvious outward sign of the man he had been nearly three years past. “Whatever it was that sent you here, I’m glad of it,” Cary had said. “But whatever it is that calls you home now, remember what you’ve seen, what you know. Remember the difference one man can make.”
A movement at the corner of his gaze jerked him back to the present. Sarah was knotting her ungloved fingers in the fringe of her shawl. “In all those years serving as a—clerk,” she said, laying skeptical emphasis on the word he had once used to describe his work there, “you must have learned a great deal about the management of people, of land, of money. Perhaps some of that could be put to use here.” He could see that the tips of her fingers were turning blue where the threads of yarn cut into her flesh and prevented the flow of blood. “You are seven and twenty now,” she pointed out hesitantly, as if she expected him to dispute the number. “Perhaps it is time to come to terms with what will one day be yours. Perhaps it is time to persuade your father you can do more—”
“More than what, Lady Fairfax?” he snapped. She spoke only the truth, after all. But he did not want to hear it. “More than bed an heiress?”
She jerked away from his words as if struck. Dislodged by her step, a handful of small stones skittered and scampered their way down to the beach. Instinctively, his long fingers met around her upper arm.
“Be careful, Sarah,” he cried, dragging her hard against his chest, pulling her to safety—although he felt in considerably more danger himself with her in his arms. Their hearts thumped in unison, an uncomfortably intimate rhythm. “You might have—” His voice rough with fear, he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. Alarm flared in her eyes as they flicked from his hand to the rocks below.
With the salty wind tangling her hair, she reminded him of the way she had looked that night on the quay at Haverhythe, terror and passion warring in her aspect.
Once he released her arm, she scuttled away from the cliff’s edge, back to the relative security of the footpath. Before he could speak, apologize, explain, she darted off in the direction of the house.
What exactly had he brought her out here to say?
If he had declared a change of heart where their marriage was concerned, would she have welcomed his declaration? Or even believed it? Three years past, he had made no secret of the fact he had not wanted this marriage. And she had tried to run away from it herself—more than once.
Which told the true story of her feelings about him: the trunk stashed in the lane, awaiting a chance at escape? Or the much-handled miniature hidden inside it?
With a shake of his head, he followed her, deliberately holding himself a few yards behind, swiping at the undergrowth with his riding crop as he passed.
He was beginning to know his own heart, but until he felt more certain of hers, it would be far wiser to hold his tongue.
When he reached the manor, Sarah was nowhere in sight. A smart gig stood on the drive. As its driver descended, the hems of a set of bronze skirts peeped into view, followed by the toe of a delicate ankle boot. The brim of a jaunty hat. And a cascade of fire-red curls.
“Eliza!” he called, stepping forward to offer his hand. “How good to see a friendly face.” He was sorely in need of someone who would not fuss or scold or shatter his defenses.
“Ah, Fairfax.” She smiled. “Just back from your morning ride?” she asked, as her emerald eyes flickered over him.
He glanced down at his disheveled kit, almost surprised to find himself still wearing it. Long, scraggly blades of grass clogged the fringed tip of his crop. “Something like that,” he concurred, thrusting it behind his back.
“Lady Estley was most insistent I arrive first thing,” she said as they approached the house. “She is planning a party this evening to celebrate your return. Supper and cards. With all the most important local personages,” she added, an acerbic little smile curving her lips.
He laughed. “A small party, then. Well, you are welcome at Lynscombe, Eliza. Whatever the circumstances.” At the bottom step, he paused. “Do you know?” He did not add the words “about my wife.” He could see by her expression he did not need to.
“Lady Estley was kind enough to share the shocking discovery with me. Three years spent in hiding, doing God knows what with God knows whom, a child born in the interim . . .” She broke off with a theatrical shudder.
“Have a care, Eliza,” he warned. Their friendship gave her a great deal of license, but she must understand how things stood now. “You are speaking of Lady Fairfax.”
“Lady Fairfax,” she echoed. “Never say you’ve come to care for that shopkeeper’s daughter you married? After all she’s done? Why, even before the first scandal broke, you swore to me you never could.”
“Pevensey is hardly a—” he began. But his feeble protest was arrested by her searching green eyes.
As she studied his expression, her own shifted slightly. Before he could read it, however, she had recovered and something like a smile quirked her lips. “Apparently, I would have done well to remember that promises are like piecrust. Easily broken.”
At the top of the steps, Jarrell opened the door as if on cue. “Good morning, sir. Ma’am,” he said, bowing them through. “I put the other guests in the green receiving room.”
“Guests?” The word echoed in the empty hall.
The butler inclined his head again. “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pevensey arrived not half an hour past, my lord.”
Chapter 19
Sarah flew up the wide central staircase to the first floor. If her head had not already been reeling from the strange encounter on the cliff, certainly the butler’s announcement would have sent her into a spin. She paused only long enough to allow a footman to open the set of double doors, then entered the large and impressive room behind them.
Before an imposing marble mantelpiece in the center of an elegant green and gold room stood a middle-aged couple in traveling clothes. They grasped hands and turned as one toward the sound of her entry.
The woman came forward first, her brown hair streaked with gray as it had not been three years back. “Sarah?” she whispered, one tentative hand extended toward her daughter.
“Oh, Mama.” Sarah tangled their fingers together and pulled her mother down to the nearest sofa, fearful her legs would not support her.
With a soft sigh, Mama held their joined hands in her lap and patted Sarah’s absently, her eyes searching her daughter’s face as if trying to assure herself this was not some fevered vision.
In his characteristically energetic fashion, Papa paced, his movement stirring the draperies. “And where have you been hiding yourself all this time, my girl?” he scolded.
“I have been living in a fishing village on the northern coast of Devonshire.”
“So close?” her mother whispered.
Sarah’s eyes dropped closed, as if they still felt the strain of looking out over the water, searching for some glimpse of Bristol in the haze on the horizon. “So close.” When she was more composed, she met her father’s gaze once again. “I told the people there I was a widow,” she explained, plucking at her skirt.
“On what did you live?” Her mother gasped.
“I gave les
sons on the pianoforte to some of the children in the village,” Sarah answered, lifting her chin as she spoke, refusing to be an object of pity. “It was not much, but I was very careful with what I earned. I boarded with the widow of a fisherman. I lived simply. I made do.”
Papa paused. “That’s all very well and good, my dear, but really . . . three years?” His voice was sharp with annoyance. “I don’t see how you could allow your mama to worry so. You know the state of her health.”
“I do,” Sarah acknowledged. Mama’s health had been a source of concern for as long as Sarah could remember, although no ailment had ever been specified. She thought even now that her mother did not look as bad as she might have—fatigued by the journey, of course, and older, but not exactly ill. “I’m sorry, Papa. I thought it would be best if I left—that it would spare you some of the pain, some of the scandal.”
Papa looked skeptical. “Still, to let us go on believing you had died—?”
She felt a twinge of guilt but pushed it down. She had decided to go, yes. But she had also been driven to do it. “I am sorry that you were hurt, sorry that you worried needlessly for me. But perhaps if I had seen even a glimmer of that concern on the night of the nuptial ball, I would not have felt that I had to leave.”
Mama withdrew her hand and Papa said reproachfully, “What could we have done?”
She was accustomed to thinking of her mother as easily cowed. After all, Papa was a big man—tall, barrel chested, with a voice to match, and despite his tailor’s efforts to smooth those rough merchant-class edges, they insisted on wearing through. Mama rarely did anything to invite his wrath. Certainly Sarah had never thought of her father as weak.
Until now.
When she looked at him, Sarah could only see his misguided sense of his own inferiority to men like the Marquess of Estley. “You might have believed in me. You might have come to my defense,” she replied quietly.
“We thought you dead,” her father reminded her. Mama gave a quiet sob and raised a handkerchief—a black-bordered handkerchief, Sarah noted with a pang—to one eye. Papa stepped to his wife’s side and patted her shoulder as a sort of silent reprimand of his daughter.
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