‘Our mother will be beside herself.’ Hope could picture it already. The fussing, the fawning. The proud shouting from the rooftops. ‘She’ll be counting the minutes till she can call herself Grandmama and will likely bankrupt Papa with all the shopping she will do. When is the baby due?’
Faith and Piers shared an odd look, before she shrugged and laughed. ‘January too. Once again, I fear the Brookes family of Bloomsbury shall have to endure another scandal as nobody is going to believe this little thing will be a good four months premature.’ She patted her stomach again, looking so blissfully happy, Hope was filled with envy. ‘The world will know we anticipated her vows.’
A habit which was clearly a Brookes family trait, seeing as she had too. Not that she held out any hope that she and Luke would now take any, because she certainly wouldn’t beg. And if the stubborn wretch had that little trust in her to have believed her guilt in the first instance, she wanted no part of him.
Perhaps, if she kept telling herself that, she would come to believe it.
‘But scandal is our middle name after all.’ Faith brushed it away as no matter, obviously no longer caring one whit what the world had to say about her. ‘Although according to Charity’s frequent and salacious letters, you’ve been the one causing all the scandal of late, Hope—and with a dissolute marquess no less. The one you allegedly pushed in the fountain at my engagement ball.’
That comment earned her a very knowing look over the rim of Faith’s teacup. One which made it plain Charity had told her absolutely everything she knew. ‘Our baby sister says he is big and tall, is as handsome as sin and looks like a pirate. She is utterly convinced he is the one and that, as unlikely as it seems when one considers that you have always been more cynical than I, Charity is adamant you are hopelessly in love with him. Is she correct?’ The familiar teasing tone caused a knot of hurt in Hope’s throat that would take all her legendary bravado to hide. ‘Are more wedding bells imminent?’
She tried to swallow past it. Tried to smile. But it was then, to her complete horror and shame, that the unsentimental, emotionless and pessimistic middle Brookes sister did something she hadn’t done in front of another living soul since the day she turned fifteen. She collapsed against her most level-headed sibling in an emotional and noisy heap, then cried her eyes out for over an hour.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘So let me get this straight...’ Alone together in the drawing room after poor Piers had beaten a hasty retreat, Faith passed Hope yet another clean handkerchief to blow her nose in. ‘Somebody leaked the story to the newspapers and Luke thinks it was you. You are certain about that?’
She retrieved his tatty final missive from her pocket and passed it to her sister, then cried some more. ‘I didn’t even deserve the benefit of the doubt. Just a goodbye.’
Faith stared at the note for the longest time, then screwed up her face. ‘I see hurt here, Hope—but not goodbye.’
‘His leaving was the goodbye. His housekeeper said he packed up everything before they all left and instructed her to close up the house. He isn’t coming back.’
Her sister wrapped one arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. ‘He’s hurting. Men are at their most irrational when they are in pain.’
‘He should have at least talked to me. Looked me in the eye to make his egregious accusations.’ Given her a chance to make him see sense. ‘But Luke always thinks he knows best and then runs on ahead, half-cocked.’ Trying to do the right thing to protect those he loved most of all.
‘Who else knows about his mother’s past? Physicians? Servants? Former associates and acquaintances?’
‘I have no idea.’ And no clue where to start. She had hammered on the door of the newspaper the same afternoon Luke and his mother left, demanding to know who their source was, and had been kicked out on her ear.
‘Did you tell anyone anything? Is it possible you were overheard discussing it?’
‘Not with Luke...no. We were...’ She stopped herself before she said the words in my bedroom, but her sudden wince was all it took to convey that truth to her wily sister.
‘Ahh... I see.’
‘We weren’t...’ She could feel her cheeks heating. ‘At least not then...’
Faith patted her hand and grinned at the confession. ‘It’s all right, Sister dear. You do not need to explain that to me. Not when I am the one who walked up the aisle apparently at least three months pregnant. With the right man, all propriety flies straight out of the window along with all your inhibitions.’ Then her eyes flicked to Hope’s stomach. ‘Is there a chance you could be...?’
‘No!’ Maybe. There certainly hadn’t seemed any need to take precautions. ‘Possibly... I sincerely hope not as that would rather complicate things.’ Which were quite complicated enough already. She didn’t want him because he felt beholden. ‘I suppose somebody could have overhead me and Maria talking about things in the garden—not that we saw anyone.’ Hope threw out her hands, exasperated. ‘And not that he would believe either, when he is so wedded to his outrage and unfair disappointment in me.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘I did.’ Her attempt at haughty bravado lacked conviction and her shoulders slumped. ‘I do.’ And likely always would too.
The irreplaceable wretch!
‘Do you still want to marry him?’
‘Only if he accepts the fact I am entirely innocent.’ She wouldn’t live with his doubts. That unsatisfactory compromise would be a step too far. ‘He should have trusted me. Implicitly.’ Like she trusted him.
‘He should—but men consumed by love are gloriously irrational, so as the more sensible sex we must afford them the occasional bit of slack. Do you remember Piers’s irrational jealousy when he saw me dancing with Edward Tate? When I thought all was done and dusted between us, it was you who intervened. Your sensible advice saved us and because it worked, I shall repeat it back to you. If you believe he is the one, that he is worth the risk and the effort of eternity, then you owe it to both of you to fight for your happiness. It’s barely two days’ drive from here to the Cornish coast. Why don’t we go there now and you can look the idiot in the eyes and make him see sense?’
Proud anger was instantly replaced by fear. ‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘We cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it.’ Faith shrugged, her eyes filled with sympathy as she took her hand. ‘But better that than remaining a bystander wedded to her own self-righteous outrage and regretting it for ever.’
* * *
Luke was soaked to the skin by the time he got home from his evening ride. Soaked by the violent summer storm which matched his thunderous mood, chilled by the stiff sea breeze which had ruthlessly battered the cliffs like Hope had battered his poor heart, and thoroughly exhausted. A restless, impotent week of practically no sleep wasn’t doing anything to help heal his shredded emotions, neither were the endless, mindless rides he now took to clear his head. Two hours on this one and his damn head was still as confused as it had been last week and instead of lessening, the relentless pain in his chest was getting worse.
Which would have been bad enough without all the nagging doubts, which like his nagging mother constantly told him he should have stayed. Should have listened. Should have at least given her—them—a chance before he had slammed that door quite so decisively because he thought he knew best and was hurting so bad he wasn’t rational.
Now, it seemed it wasn’t his mother’s mind that was failing on the back of that hasty decision—but his. He had mislaid it somewhere on the road between Bloomsbury and Tregally when the enormity of what he had lost permeated his soul, and like a virulent cancer, destroying a bit more of it with every passing day.
He stared up at his house as what was left of the day disappeared behind it, not caring that rain still poured down his neck, beneath his collar and down his spine
, and seriously considered turning his poor horse around to traipse another directionless route around his grounds again rather than go inside. Because going inside when the lamps were lit inevitably meant staying still and that gave him nothing whatsoever to focus on for the rest of the night but his own misery. Instead, he wearily led his mount to the stables, intending to brush it down himself for something to do until he saw the fancy carriage parked inside it.
Bizarrely, he knew that Hope had arrived in it before he sprinted to the house to find her, and skidded to a sodden stop in his parlour. He knew because his shrivelled, trampled heart started to beat again in his chest and the foolish optimistic voice in his head was praying that she could make it all right long before he saw her sat there with his mother and her older sister. Praying her arrival would miraculously fix things but fearing they likely wouldn’t most of all.
Her green eyes were troubled. The shadows under them as deep and as damning as his. ‘You’re drenched.’
‘It’s raining.’ An explanation which was rendered immediately unnecessary by the sudden flash of lightning beyond the dripping windows and the deep rumble of thunder which quickly followed it.
‘It’s late and this storm is in for the night.’ His mother touched her sister’s hand. ‘Why don’t I show you to your room, Faith?’
The panic was instantaneous. ‘They can’t stay here.’ If things were doomed to remain unresolved, he couldn’t bear the thought of her sleeping under the same roof. So close and yet so far. ‘They can stay at the inn in Tintagel.’
‘You’d send a pregnant woman and your intended twenty miles, along unfamiliar coastal roads in the dark in this weather? Over my dead body, Luke!’ Then she prodded him, unaware that the pain of the use of the word intended stung more than any pointed finger could, because he had no idea if she was still his intended or not. Whether she still wanted him or not, or whether he could forgive her or not. ‘Hope has travelled two days to get here to speak to you, and you’ll hear her out, or so help me I’ll murder you myself!’ And with that, she left them, taking the silently disapproving sister with her.
‘I didn’t go to the newspapers, Luke.’ Hope stood with more quiet dignity than he could muster. ‘And you should have known that without my coming here to say it.’
‘But you spoke to someone, Hope, didn’t you? You betrayed my confidence and my mother’s and made it impossible for us to stay in London.’
The sudden anger swirled in her eyes. ‘I spoke to no one. It wasn’t my secret to tell. Either someone overheard me talking to Maria in the garden or somebody else knew what happened.’
‘You expect me to believe you never confided to one of your sisters?’
‘Yes, Luke, I do.’ She folded her arms and stared, exasperated. ‘Why on earth would I betray your confidence or your mother’s when I love you and would never do a thing to harm you?’
‘I have no earthly idea.’
‘Why would I lie, Luke?’ She grabbed his hand. Laced her fingers tight in his. ‘After everything...after what we did? I love you! I gave myself to you! Body, heart and soul.’ He could hear her tears and they were like torture. ‘Why would I ruin that when you are my everything?’
The cruellest words he didn’t want to hear.
‘I don’t know, Hope.’ He wanted to believe her. Needed to so much. ‘But even if it was an accident, I cannot forgive it.’ He extricated his hand as he stepped away, needing the distance. ‘The stakes are just too high—the risk too great. If it were just me you had hurt, I could...but it isn’t. I have a responsibility to my mother and her recovery. I have to keep her safe no matter.’ And he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t trust every single person around her.
‘You hold me entirely to blame for somebody else overhearing?’ She looked so wounded. ‘Even though I could have had no possible idea that they have done so and your mother volunteered all the information freely? And you have no other candidate who could have betrayed you? None? Not a single other person in your entire thirty years could possibly know some of what happened?’
When he didn’t answer, she shook her head, those clever green eyes hardening to flint. ‘You are a fraud, Lucius Nathaniel Elijah Duff. A two-faced, lily-livered, disingenuous fraud. How dare you make me fall in love with you and then abandon me at the first hurdle!’ She stalked to the door and tugged it open, then jabbed her finger hard in the air. ‘And how dare you lecture me on trust and fearlessness when you are incapable of either virtue yourself! What a crushing disappointment of a man you truly are! At least all the others never pretended to be worthy.’
He heard her march down his hall and up his stairs. Heard a door slam while he remained rooted to the spot. His mother bustled in seconds later, looking alarmed and exasperated in equal measure. ‘She didn’t deny it, then?’ She lowered herself to the arm of the chair, stunned. ‘I cannot believe it.’
It took all his strength to shake his head. ‘She denied it. Claimed she never said a word to another living soul and never would. Suggested someone must have overheard you both discussing it in the garden at the Renshaw ball.’
‘Did it occur to you to believe her?’ Of course it had. He had wanted to believe her so much he was still sorely tempted to chase after her and beg her to stay for ever. ‘As I cannot believe it was done with any malice, even if it was done at all.’
‘Whether it was intentional or not makes no matter.’
‘If we were overheard it certainly matters, as the way I recall that particular conversation, it was entirely one-sided. I did all the talking and Hope listened, so if they overheard anyone, it was me. Doesn’t that make it all my fault and not hers?’
‘She fed you the questions.’
She vehemently shook her head. ‘I had a speech all worked out. I wanted her to know the whole truth about what happened in case it was my illness which was keeping you both apart. In fact, I told her much more than was printed in the papers. Things I have never even dared to tell you.’ She frowned then. ‘Things about my first bout of madness which I’d have thought were much more salacious than all the nonsense about them treating me in a spinning chair and bleeding me twice monthly.’
As much as he wanted to believe it, he needed proof. ‘Like what?’ Because they certainly knew all about the laudanum and the restraints and how nonsensical she had been by the end of those three long years.
‘Like the fact that it was birthing you that sent me mad in the first place and that I couldn’t bear to look at you at all until you were nearly three years old. I hated you that much.’
‘What?’ He was reeling. ‘You hated me?’ How had he not known that?
‘I don’t hate you any more, dear, so don’t look so distraught. I was ill. Dr Long Fox calls it the insanity of childbirth and he believes it is more common a condition than most people realise, although I had a particularly dreadful dose of it. Hope and I talked extensively about it, yet the newspapers made no mention of it. Their report was too obsessed with Mill House, which we barely touched upon at all as I recall, and when we did I am sure I was vague on the details, though the ones they printed were so accurate.’
‘Not that accurate! They said you tried to hang yourself.’
‘I did, dear. But I certainly never mentioned that shameful secret to Hope any more than I ever did to you. In fact, not even Clowance knew. Some things are just too personal.’
It was his turn to slump in the chair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
If Hope expected him to cool down and quickly see sense, he didn’t. As the storm raged outside, and long after an overtired Faith had gone to her bedroom, he remained resolutely downstairs ensconced with Maria.
As miserable as she was by this depressing turn of events when she had hoped the grand gesture would be enough to get through his thick, Cornish skull, she flatly refused to cry herself to sleep. She had shed enough tears over Luke and t
he tragic truth was, if he couldn’t trust her and her love for him, then they really were done and the wretched long journey from Bath in the worst possible weather had all been for nothing. With as much dignity as she could muster, she would leave first thing and never darken the dratted fool’s door again. And good riddance to him!
She furiously tossed her brush back in her overnight bag and hauled out her nightgown. Let him wallow in his self-inflicted martyrdom alone for ever. She wouldn’t care and she wouldn’t miss him. In her temper, she knotted the laces on the back of her dress rather than undo them, forcing her to fight her arms out of the stupid thing done up. Which meant she was in the midst of wrestling the too-tight bodice over her breasts when her door was flung open and he came in uninvited, still dressed in the crumpled damp clothes he had come home in, like a wet dog with his tail between his legs.
‘Can we talk?’
Trapped neither in nor out of the dress, she grabbed a pillow to cover herself before she glared at him with haughty disdain. ‘I tried that and you refused to listen!’
‘I thought we had already established weeks ago that I am a ham-fisted clod with straw for brains. If we hadn’t, then I’ll reiterate it now.’ Defeated, he sat heavily on her mattress. ‘I am sorry, Hope. I should have believed you and I certainly should have afforded you the right of rebuttal before I stormed off like a lion with a thorn in his paw, dragging my poor mother with me and behaving like a coward.’ Two dark and very miserable eyes peered up at her through a windswept riot of wild hair. ‘My only defence, not that it is any way a defence, is I have never been hopelessly in love before, so had no concept of how irrational that state would render me.’ He shook his shaggy head, his expression more wretched than she had ever seen it. ‘My mother went mad because she gave birth to me.’
Hope nodded, feeling sorry for him for that awful fact. ‘She told me.’
‘Yet you never told a soul—even me.’
‘It wasn’t my secret to tell but I did urge her to talk to you about it as she carries a lot of unnecessary guilt for it. For it wasn’t her fault. Apparently, many physicians are starting to recognise such melancholy after childbirth as an uncommon side effect.’ In the absence of anything else to fill her time between the interminable carriage ride from Bloomsbury to Bath, Hope had done her research.’
Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 23