by Allison Lane
Which did not explain why Fay hadn’t intervened to help him. Together they could have tossed Drew over the cliff and taken Broadbanks for themselves. Randolph would have married her willingly, giving her a husband who cared instead of one who despised her.
Stupid! Randolph had fallen to his death. Once her lover was gone, Fay would have had no choice but to coerce Drew into marriage.
Assuming she loved Randolph, of course. She may have been using him in her feud with Drew. Fay was vindictive. Drew had repudiated her and now loved another. She couldn’t allow him to get away with it. Would she taunt him with her liaison once they were wed? Even worse, would she start rumors that he had killed Randolph? The wedding would release all restraints on her tongue.
Cherlynn listened with half an ear to Anne’s descriptions of how Fay had played on her insecurities to make her miserable. Not because Fay had any particular grudge against the girl, but to exercise her sadistic powers. And again, to hurt Drew.
The rest of Cherlynn’s mind tried to plot her next move. There was little point in sharing this with Drew just yet. It would hurt and enrage him, but he could do nothing about it without harming his family. That impotence would make life even harder for him. But if Fay had been coupling with Randolph, she probably took other lovers as well. Lady Travis had noted overt affairs soon after the wedding. They had probably started long before, if the one with Randolph was any guide. Finding proof of such a liaison would fulfill Cherlynn’s mission, for an unchaste, licentious bride was anathema to powerful lords.
* * * *
The moment Anne went upstairs to change, Cherlynn escaped the house. She needed a plan. How was she to find hard evidence of Fay’s affairs? It wasn’t something one advertised even in her own era. In the Regency, such goings-on would be cloaked in so much secrecy that she had virtually no chance. Fay’s reputation for vindictiveness would seal even the loosest lips.
Come on, brain, think!
Moving past the formal gardens, she turned along a path that followed the stream uphill into a forest, enjoying its pleasant gurgle and the way sunlight filtered through the trees to highlight random plants. Anne knew nothing beyond Fay’s fling with Randolph and a few vague rumors. This was not drawing room talk, so the area gossips would be of minimal help. Drew might know of possible paramours, but he was a last resort, and his four-year absence wouldn’t make things any easier. Fay had been barely sixteen when he had left. Perhaps Grace could question servants and villagers.
She was turning over the pros and cons of that idea when the path opened into a charming clearing around where the stream chattered over a short fall. Thick grass covered the hillside. Butterflies probed a handful of late summer flowers.
But the clearing was already occupied.
Frederick jumped, yelping as he nearly landed in the water. “Goodness, you startled me, Lady Emily!” he exclaimed.
Having done nothing to hide her unstealthy approach, Cherlynn refused to apologize. “What were you watching so intently that you didn’t hear me coming? I’ve been humming since I entered the wood.”
He flushed, then nodded toward the trailing bough of a willow that was perched on the stream bank. A butterfly finished easing out of its cocoon, its wings still damp and wrinkled.
“How beautiful,” she whispered, watching in awe as the creature stretched, pumping fluid into almost invisible veins. Its wings slowly straightened, their color growing more brilliant by the moment. “Anne would love to sketch it.”
“She is calling at the vicarage this afternoon,” he replied absently.
“And how do you know that?” she demanded, abandoning her vigil over the butterfly. Anne had originally intended to go shopping, changing her mind at breakfast when Lady Clifford expressed a wish to call on Mrs. Rumfrey.
Embarrassment stained his cheeks. “I sometimes run into her when I am out walking,” he admitted.
That he would bump into Anne while walking fully three miles from Raeburn House was odd enough, but using the plural within days of arriving meant that the meetings were planned. Anne was slipping off to assignations, a fact that would ruin her if it became public.
Yet this was precisely the opportunity Cherlynn needed. She drew herself upright. Once she discovered what he was hiding, she could decide what to do about this latest development. “You are in England now, sir,” she reminded him sharply. “You may not arrange assignations with well-born young ladies. Even accidental meetings will not do. Do you wish to destroy her reputation?”
“Of course not,” he countered.
“Have you requested permission to court her?”
“I am not courting her.”
“Then what do you call it?” she demanded, rounding on him. “Seduction?”
“God, no!” he exploded with such force that she believed him.
“Why not call upon her in the usual way? As Lord Raeburn’s heir, you would be welcome. Or do you fear to face Lord Thurston because you’ve lied about your background?”
“What?” He honestly looked perplexed. “I was born at Raeburn House. What’s to explain?”
“I was referring to the tales of America you spun so eloquently. Surely you know that the last Indian attack in the Shenandoah Valley occurred during the French and Indian War. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was at least fifty years ago. What happened to your family?”
He blanched. “I thought Englishmen considered America to be a wasteland populated only by hostile Indians,” he confessed.
“But I am not an English man.”
He looked her over. “Obviously. Female to the bone. And educated, as well.” He sighed. “Despite crossing the ocean, my luck is as wretched as ever.”
“The jig is up,” she said softly. “Are you really Frederick Raeburn?”
“Oh, that part is perfectly true,” he assured her. “In fact, everything I said was true – except for the details of my family’s end.”
“You really did lose your family?”
He paced the bank for several minutes. She sat on a nearby boulder, studying his face and the hands clenched behind his back. He did not fit the image of the Regency buck she had formed after reading so many novels. And not just because his clothes were looser and more casual than those worn by Drew and Charles. His movements were freer and more purposeful, even in this moment of aimless motion. His complexion was different as well, his face tanned and his hands callused from hard labor. She recognized an animal magnetism that boded ill for Anne if he turned out to be a fraud.
“We emigrated to the United States when I was two years old,” he began at last. “I remember little of the early years beyond cramped rooms and empty bellies. My mother was in a family way most of the time. Two brothers died in infancy, leaving me with three brothers and two sisters by the time I was ten.”
“I’m surprised she survived such excess.”
“So am I, and I wish she had not.” The last comment was an aside to himself, but his tone was so harsh she could not help but overhear. “Pa finally gave up trying to support a growing family in New York, so we moved west, settling in the hills overlooking the Shenandoah. It is pretty country, rich in game, but most of the land he bought was too steep to plant. We could barely coax enough from the ground to fill our own table, let alone sell. Pa was always a dreamer, accepting claims that the property was five hundred acres of good farmland. He bought without ever looking at it.”
“He wouldn’t be the first to fall victim to land fraud,” she concurred. Even in the twentieth century, misrepresentation was a common complaint in the courts.
“Nor the last. I helped in the early years, clearing fields and planting crops. Pa’s mother was Scots, so he brought in a cousin who helped build a whiskey distillery. Malcolm stayed for a year before moving on to find his own land. We later heard he’d been killed by Indians in the western wilderness.”
“Hence the idea for your own bereavement,” she murmured.
“Silly of me to prevari
cate.” He sighed. “If only he’d died sooner. I grew to hate that distillery. Much of the output went into Pa’s stomach, making him more and more distant as time passed. Ma was complaining worse each year, flying into rages when he refused to move back to a city. By the time I was sixteen, it was too much. I left for Baltimore and got a job in a shipyard.”
“So you do know something about the shipping business,” she said, when he paused. “Does your knowledge extend beyond building the vessels?”
“Yes. Building was never my strength. Within the year I had transferred to the office of one of the top Baltimore importers. I know the business well and have plenty of contacts, though this is not the ideal time to start my own company. If this contretemps over impressment does not resolve soon, I don’t see how I can succeed.”
“That is a problem, of course.” She shook her head, knowing that the problem was already out of control. It would be two and a half years before he could do anything. “But why did you lie about your family?”
“I returned to the farm a couple times a year to check on the crops and make sure the kids weren’t starving. Pa had taken in a wanderer to help with the fields, but the fellow wasn’t all that bright. My last visit was in March – to make sure all was ready for the spring planting. And I figured to stretch their supplies by taking Raymond back to Baltimore with me. He hated the farm and hated what Pa and Ma were putting the kids through. With what I had saved, he could have set himself up to learn a trade.”
“He was the next brother?”
He nodded. “There was a gap behind me, so while he was the second son, he was barely seventeen.” He struggled with grief before continuing. “I met up with Josh Norton in Washington. He lived half a day west of us and was also headed home, so we rode together, arriving just before dusk. I invited him to spend the night.”
“Just being neighborly,” she suggested softly.
“In part. He’d been showing some interest in Katy, who’d just turned sixteen . . . I should have known something was wrong the moment we rode into the yard.” His voice grated. “There wasn’t a sound. But I didn’t suspect trouble until I opened the door. Katy was lying in the hall, her fingers still dug into the floor from trying to crawl outside. She’d been stabbed a dozen times. I followed the blood trail upstairs. They were all there. Raymond, Thad, Marcus, Milly. All stabbed in their beds. All dead. Blood was everywhere. Ma was on the floor of the room she shared with Pa. She had the end of Pa’s dueling pistol stuck in her mouth, with the top of her head blown off. Pa was still alive.”
She jumped. “Alive? Had he done it?”
“No.” Fury speeded his pacing. “He’d been stabbed six times, and was too weak from blood loss to move. But he was sober enough to tell the tale. Ma had been getting odder and odder, exploding in fury over little things, yet not seeming to care about serious problems. Pa was doing nothing by then – except drinking himself insensible every day. The hired hand left at Christmas after Ma threatened to kill him. Raymond took over running the farm, but his heart wasn’t in it, and last year’s crops were so poor, they did not even have enough food to survive the winter. If anyone had thought to mention it to me—” He paused to regain his composure as grief again cracked his voice. “Whatever the reason for their silence, the situation was beyond desperate. They’d eaten all the seed grain and even the potato and onion sets. With no way to replace them, there would be no new crops. The final straw must have been my last letter to Raymond. Since I found it in Ma’s room, I doubt he even saw it.”
“Is that where you mentioned setting him up in Baltimore?”
He nodded. “She’d always had a bee in her bonnet about her aristocratic breeding – which amounted to being a squire’s daughter and sister-in-law to a baron. She yearned to be a society hostess in New York or Philadelphia, but we had neither the money nor the connections to meet the leading families. Pa’s move to Virginia was the death knell for her dreams. That’s when she started getting irrational. I think she ran mad when she found that letter. She couldn’t stand the thought that her children might return to civilization, leaving her to rot with Pa. So she grabbed a butcher knife and started slashing.”
She glared at him. The scene he had described didn’t jibe with his explanation. “Why would she kill herself then?”
“She didn’t. Pa wasn’t as drunk as usual that night. He not only woke up, but managed to turn on her. He killed her, then staged a suicide to avoid any questions. But by then, he was too weak to get to the neighbor’s. He collapsed on the bed and all but passed out. I got there two days later. Pa was too far gone to save. He died the next morning.”
“Tragic, but why cover it up?” she asked.
He shrugged. “How can you tell someone you haven’t seen in twenty years that his wife’s sister killed six people and his cousin killed her? What purpose does that serve?” He sighed. “And now he’s suffered an apoplexy. Even if he recovers, I dare not tell him for fear of bringing on another attack.”
She didn’t agree, but she could see his point. Any hint of madness could taint an entire family. People in this era didn’t understand mental illness, and few would risk contaminating their own lines. A twentieth-century psychiatrist could have a field day figuring out what had driven Mrs. Raeburn to murder, but as Frederick had said, it was over. What purpose did revealing the truth serve? “Had there been any other unbalanced people in her family?” she asked.
“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t know. Ma turned her back on them the moment she married into the aristocracy. So did Aunt Faith. But I suppose I should check.”
She heard his sudden realization that he might carry a stain in his blood, but also noted his determination to do what was necessary. Nodding, she turned the conversation to America and some of his interests. He was determined to start a shipping company in England. She saw no reason to dissuade him. He would learn of the war soon enough. If she was successful in preventing Drew’s wedding, he would have an estate on which to live in the interim. And she suspected that his interest in Anne would grow. Anne had looked radiant enough lately to guess that she fully returned his attraction. Hopefully, the madness that had seized his mother would not prove to be hereditary. It may have been born solely from stress.
The butterfly’s wings were hardening. It wouldn’t be long before it was ready to take flight. She was about to excuse herself when Anne arrived in the clearing. Her blush was proof enough that Frederick was here by appointment. But Cherlynn let it go. Frederick would not take advantage of Anne, especially now. As soon as they were engrossed in watching the butterfly, she quietly returned to the house.
Too bad Fay’s behavior did not qualify as mad. Or perhaps not. She quite liked Frederick and didn’t want his life complicated by the fear of madness. Nor would she wish any of the hereditary mental problems onto her worst enemy. If only Fay understood that living with someone who despised her was hell. Power and fortune couldn’t compensate for it. Cherlynn should know.
She had hoped that divorce would finally put her life with Willard behind her, but it hadn’t. What a naïve idiot she had been.
They had met at Georgetown in a summer school political science class. That summer had been the only period of her life when she’d felt good about herself. For the first time since childhood, her weight had been under control. Her success at derailing the marsh bill had triggered an interest in politics. And she’d just finished her first novel and submitted it to publishers.
Snorting at her own stupidity, she retreated to her room and stared at the gardens.
Willard had been a classmate. A Harvard law student, he was serving a summer internship with a senator, though neither luck nor ability had secured the appointment. As the only son of a big-name lawyer and long-time lobbyist, Willard had merely expressed an interest. The senator created a job for him on the spot. Willard was accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted. When he met Cherlynn, he had wanted her.
Foolish, foolish girl! She had d
one little dating over the years so had no defense against his practiced wiles. He was handsome, charming, sophisticated, and wealthy. Despite her initial skepticism, he had swept her off her feet and boosted her self-esteem, then introduced her to the world of money, power, and privilege. It was no wonder she had fallen in love. She’d tried to hide her feelings, distrusting their different backgrounds, but it was impossible. By the time he took her home to meet his parents, she was a firm believer in fairy-tale endings.
Idiot!
Her soul-searching during the divorce had revealed every mistake. At least half of her attraction was the excitement of actually moving into the high society that she had read about for so many years, but she hadn’t realized that until later. His attentions had flattered her, catering to needs she had not previously recognized. Even his overbearing mother and hard-nosed father had failed to dim her euphoria. They were cool but polite. If only she had overheard the tirades they had directed at Willard. The son of old-money, New England aristocracy did not marry the daughter of a Virginia shopkeeper. Cherlynn lacked beauty, breeding, fortune, and any claim to social status. They derided him for poor judgment, claiming that he’d fallen for the wiles of a scheming gold digger.
It had been the wrong approach. In a fit of youthful defiance, Willard married Cherlynn within the week and took her back to Harvard for his final year of study.
It hadn’t taken him long to regret his decision. His parents canceled his allowance. Cherlynn couldn’t find a job, so she filled her hours with reading and writing. Willard belittled the romances she loved and derided her desire to write what he considered trash. His own income barely covered a tiny apartment, food, and school expenses, worsening his temper. And her depression over a sheaf of rejection letters made it hard to care about mundane chores like cooking and cleaning, which further infuriated him.
Law school was stressful enough without adding financial pressure and a dysfunctional marriage. Daily arguments soon revealed his parents’ continuing tirades. They stayed in touch, reminding him regularly that he need only rectify his error to get his allowance reinstated. The arguments also revealed his arrogance, stripping away his facade of caring tolerance to reveal a shallow, selfish snob, whose initial attraction arose from pique that she hadn’t fallen worshipfully at his feet. Knowing that she had misjudged him from the start killed her last vestige of self-confidence, convincing her that she was doomed to failure.