by Dalton, Lily
“Perhaps we should just go,” he suggested darkly. “Perhaps I don’t want to know who Robert Garswood is or what he might have to say.”
“Why would you even suppose that? I don’t understand.”
And yet he provided no explanation.
At last, at her gentle urging, Claxton agreed. After only a short wait, a footman led them down a brief corridor past a cloisonné vase full of familiar yellow-and-pink roses. A tall, dark-haired man with silver dusting his temples stood near the fire, dressed in a blue greatcoat, buff breeches, and tall boots, waiting to receive them. Sophia estimated him to be somewhere around the age of sixty. A dashing athletic figure and the epitome of a country gentleman, Mr. Garswood leaned heavily on a cane and peered at them with unconcealed surprise and delight.
“Your Graces.” A warm smile spread across his face, and he bowed his head to each of them. Approaching, his gaze remained fixed on Vane. “Yes, the likeness is certainly there. Please, come inside.”
Framed in rich burgundy draperies, large windows afforded them a view of the valley below and a large greenhouse on the distant corner of the snow-covered lawn. Numerous books lay around the room and lined the bookshelves, most sharing the theme of English flora and botany.
“You knew my mother?” asked Claxton in a solemn tone, one that contained, Sophia believed, a bit of dread.
“I did. And your father as well.”
From the pocket of his greatcoat, Vane produced the book of poems. “She left this for me. Do you know what it means?”
“I do, indeed. When you were ten years old, my wife and I placed that book of poems in an old black pot, just as your dear mother instructed us to do.” Again he smiled. “But I must say I’m still very shocked to see you. After her death, when we received her letter, I’ll admit to being doubtful you would ever cross our threshold. But those quests and you completing them—once you were grown, mind you—seemed very important to her.”
Vane looked at Sophia. “After we discovered the first quest, my wife rather insisted we complete the rest. I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Though his jaw remained tense and his shoulders, rigid, the look he directed to her conveyed gratitude.
“Then well done, your Grace,” Mr. Garswood said warmly, nodding to her. His eyes sparkled with good humor. “Elizabeth would be very happy to know you are both here. I think somehow, even now, she does know.”
“Why are we here?” Vane asked bluntly.
Mr. Garswood’s chin went down, toward his chest, and he stared for a long moment at the carpet before returning his gaze to Vane’s. He said in a voice softened by emotion, “Because your mother believed it important for you to know the truth. All of it. Once you were a man.”
The truth? A sudden, fierce protectiveness came over Sophia. What would this man tell Vane, and how would it affect him from this day forward? She didn’t want him to be hurt any more.
“The truth,” Vane repeated, closing his eyes. “Yes, whatever that means, I would like to hear it.”
“You may wish for your wife to leave the room. Some details may be difficult to hear.”
Again, Sophia tensed. Leave the room? Why? But of course, she ought to if Vane wanted her to—
“I want her to stay,” Vane answered with firm conviction, though Sophia believed his color had paled a shade or perhaps two.
The words pleased her, in that they offered proof that the time they’d spent together here in Lacenfleet, and the intimacies they’d shared, had brought them closer together. Vane did not reach for her. He did not so much as glance at her. Still, Sophia felt compelled to move closer to him. To stand beside him while he heard whatever this kind-eyed stranger had to reveal.
“Very well.” Mr. Garswood nodded in assent and circled round to walk the length of the windows. “Your mother grew up not far from here. Very close, in fact, on her uncle’s property, which bordered this one.”
“I did not know that,” Vane answered, leading Sophia to the window where they joined their host in looking out over the winter landscape. “There is not much I do know about my mother’s bloodline. She did not often talk of her girlhood.”
Vane couldn’t explain it. Despite a certain trepidation over hearing what Mr. Garswood would say, he felt welcome, even comfortable here, in this man’s home. It was as if they were two old friends, reuniting after many long years for a warm and heartfelt reunion.
Mr. Garswood rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “Let me tell you our story, then. I knew your father when we were young boys. Our fathers before us had been friends, and we were friends as well. True friends as only young boys can be. But then your father, Follet as he was called then, was sent away to apprentice in the navy at only eight years old, a traumatic thing, as he was immediately thrust into the midst of the conflict with France and Spain in the siege on Havana. His ship, the HMS Stirling Castle, was one of those heavily damaged by the artillery from the fortress Morro and subsequently scuttled.”
“That’s too young,” interjected Sophia, her expression showing the same concern she would feel toward any child in the same circumstance. “I know it was done more often then, but eight years old. What horrors he must have witnessed. There must have been times when he felt so afraid.”
“During those years he visited rarely, but when he did, he would always come round and we would have the most marvelous time,” Mr. Garswood continued. “Only after the death of his father and brothers, from the same dreadful influenza that claimed so many lives that year, did he return to stay and to assume the title you, your Grace, now bear. By then, I must impress upon you, he was notably different. A man, of course, but darker somehow.”
“Darker, you say?” Vane inquired, his gaze intent. He’d borne witness to his father’s darker nature, but according to Mr. Garswood, that shadow hadn’t always been there.
Mr. Garswood nodded. The gray hair over his ears shone like silver in the winter light. “Another naval officer of my acquaintance told me that as a young officer Follet had sustained some sort of injury while serving. A blow to the head, and that he’d not been the same after, but prone to long periods of moodiness and fits of rage. Of course, none of that mattered. I welcomed his return as a friend. We hunted together. Attended the same parties and balls.”
“An injury,” Vane repeated. As a boy, he’d tried so desperately to find some trace of goodness in his father, only to be disappointed time and time again. But perhaps an injury had long ago altered the elder Lord Claxton’s mind and not evil as he’d always feared. The knowledge gave him at least a measure of the peace he’d craved for as long as he could remember. “This is the first I’ve heard of that.”
“People don’t talk of such things, of weaknesses in men from whom greatness is expected. What am I thinking? It is cold here by the windows.” He pointed to two chairs. “The both of you, please sit nearer to the fire, where it is warmer. This may take a little time.”
Vane complied, leading Sophia forward, where they took occupancy of two armchairs, while their host remained standing. He leaned toward them, speaking in the measured tones of a storyteller.
“Well, it wasn’t long before, unbeknownst to each other, Follet and I fell in love with the same young woman.” He turned to a small lacquered chest, and when he faced them again, he presented something small and round on his palm, a miniature portrait, encircled by a delicate gilt frame, which he urged Vane to take.
Vane’s breath staggered in his throat. For the first time in nearly twenty years, he viewed his mother’s likeness.
“There she is,” he whispered solemnly. “Just as I remember her.”
Where Vane and his father possessed dark coloring, Elizabeth had radiated light, not only in her golden hair, but in the sparkle in her eyes and humor on her lips.
“She was lovely,” Sophia whispered, smiling at him through tears.
Mr. Garswood presented his hand for the return of the miniature, and Vane reluctantly com
plied. Of course, Mr. Garswood could not know he possessed no other likenesses of his mother.
The elder gentleman glanced at the miniature briefly but with clear affection before returning the memento to the chest. “When I made my interest in Elizabeth known and began to court her, it became very clear to me that he cared for her too. Elizabeth had no idea, and at the time, I did not tell her, not wishing to shame him by her declared preference for me. I attempted to speak to him about it, but by then he was the Duke of Claxton. He did not share his thoughts or feelings. He only made it clear our friendship had ended.”
Mr. Garswood sank into the chair beside Vane’s, holding one leg rigidly straight. “To my great honor, your mother and I became betrothed. Yet shortly after, my regiment was called up, I at the time being a proud and brash young captain of the dragoons. But your mother wanted a summer wedding, you see, and I indulged her, believing as all young men do that I’d return in a few months’ time so that we could be married.”
“Obviously that did not happen,” Vane concluded.
Mr. Garswood crossed his hands over the pommel of his cane. “I sustained wounds. For months, I lay insensible in a German hospital, my family believing me dead.” The elder man’s gaze faded. “Pardon your Graces for my being so forward as to speak so familiarly, but unbeknownst to me, I’d left your mother in a…a delicate condition.”
“Oh my God,” Vane uttered. “It’s true, what the duke said. You are my father.”
“What?” Sophia gasped, her face gone pale with shock. Her hand found his arm, and she squeezed.
Mr. Garswood’s expression softened, and he chuckled. “No, your Grace. I am not. Though I have often wondered what might have been if the story would have gone that way.”
Abruptly, Vane left Sophia’s side to stand alone near the fire, where he stared at the ducal ring on his finger, almost afraid to relinquish the doubt that had eaten away at him since the age of ten. He had lived with that doubt for twenty years. It had become a part of him.
“Are you certain?” A rush of emotion moved through him so fast it left him dizzied. He’d harbored that festering kernel of doubt inside him for so long. “He always told me I was another man’s bastard, not his son. That he’d been forced to acknowledge me as his own because of what my whore of a mother had done.”
Mr. Garswood’s eyes flashed with outrage. “It’s simply not true. Follet married Elizabeth, of course, to spare her the scandal, but she lost our child soon after. Lord Claxton, whether you like it or not, you are his spirit and image. When you walked into this room, the resemblance took the air from my lungs.”
Claxton nodded. “I suppose, in some way, I wanted what he said to be true. I did not want to be his son, only hers. And yet the idea that I’ve been living the life of an impostor, pretending to be someone I wasn’t—” He cast a deliberate glance at Sophia, to find her eyes glittering with tears. “That did not rest well with me either.”
“He was wrong to have said it.”
“You and my mother—” Vane couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.
Mr. Garswood’s cheeks pinked, but he shook his head. “We never resumed our affair. Her ladyship was too honorable a woman to betray her vows, no matter how badly your father tormented her.”
“That woman in the portrait over there,” inquired Sophia. “Is that your wife?”
His gaze joined hers on a richly painted portrait of a smiling, auburn-haired woman holding a bouquet of wild roses.
“Indeed. Viola was a wonderful woman and very understanding about a young man’s first love. She actually sought out your mother, and they became friends.”
Claxton leaned forward in his chair and shifted toward Mr. Garswood. “I thought she looked familiar. I remember her. She visited the house from time to time and always brought my mother flowers and a book to read.”
Mr. Garswood nodded, a wistful smile on his lips. “She grieved Elizabeth’s death as if she’d lost a sister.” His voice softened. “I lost her in May of last year.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Claxton murmured.
“I count myself among the luckiest of men to have known them both.”
“Thank you also for telling me all this.”
Mr. Garswood nodded. “It ate away at his soul. The jealousy. His love for your mother, however sincere in the beginning, eventually bordered along obsession. He could not abide the fact that she had once loved another, and the knowledge that it was me, a man he came to believe was a rival rather than a friend, tormented him.”
With difficulty, he again stood, pushing up on his cane. Slowly he made his way to a side table, where he poured two brandies and a sherry, which he distributed among them.
“When I was recovered enough from my wounds to return to England, Elizabeth visited me here, only to wish me well and to explain in person what had happened with our child and why she had married another.” Mr. Garswood emptied his glass. “The servants talked, and the duke immediately believed we’d resumed our affair. You, meanwhile, had already been conceived within the honorable bonds of their marriage. They reconciled to whatever extent, long enough for you and Haden to be born, but he never forgave her for her alleged betrayal. Their relationship was always stormy and he eventually set her aside. But almost as if to torture himself, he placed her there, in Camellia House, in close proximity to my home.”
They spoke a while longer, talking over smaller details of those stories and lives forever entwined. At last Vane stood, raising Sophia by her hand.
To Mr. Garswood he said, “I cannot thank you enough. All these years I lived with that grain of doubt, one I carried with me always, believing in my darkest moments that I had no right to bear my ancestors’ name. And knowing of this injury my father sustained…it gives me peace that he was not purely evil, but somehow changed forever quite against his will.”
“I am glad to have set things right.” Mr. Garswood’s eyebrows shot up. “But this old man and his stories are not your reward. At least, not the best part of it.”
From his desk he withdrew a small wooden chest and handed it to Vane.
“This was delivered along with the instructions for that game of lookabout. Among other things, there’s a letter inside she wrote to you, just before her death, and one intended for your brother, Lord Haden, as well. I was only to give them to you if you completed the final quest.”
*
Their return to Camellia House took nearly twice as long as the initial trip to the Garswood estate. The blades that had conveyed them so swiftly from place to place for the last several days now sank deep into the melting snow, even touching the earth beneath, requiring the draft horse to exert more effort than before. As Vane held the reins and urged the animal to continue, his gaze continually fell to Sophia’s lap, where she held the precious box containing his mother’s letters and mementoes of his past. In a matter of moments he’d be able to examine everything. He looked forward to sharing the moment of first discoveries with Sophia. How strange and wonderful it had been to realize, as Mr. Garswood had revealed one secret after another, that no matter what the man had said—no matter how it might have shocked Vane or shaken his foundations—as long as Sophia was there standing beside him, everything would be all right.
Once returned to the house, he rekindled the fire and they spread a large blanket before it and reclined there with the box between them.
Hours before, Lord and Lady Meltenbourne had returned to the village to await the first possible ferry passage to London. Mr. and Mrs. Branigan and the baby were comfortably settled into their new quarters over the stable. As for Mr. and Mrs. Kettle, the excitement of the previous days had resulted in considerable fatigue for them. At Sophia’s urging, they rested in their old quarters adjacent to the kitchen, refusing to leave Camellia House until the Duke and Duchess of Claxton made their departure the next day.
Sophia removed the lid of the box and peered down at the envelope resting on top. “Don’t wait another mom
ent, Vane. Read your mother’s letter.”
Dearest Vane,
When was your mother ever predictable? Can you believe I myself undertook to have that awful portrait hung on my very own wall? When I am gone, he will destroy any remnant of me. But never a portrait of himself hanging on my wall. He is too prideful for that.
I am just as certain one day you will remove the painting, as only you would understand its offensiveness to me. In that way, acting as my champion, I feel certain you will discover the first quest that after all this time spent apart will lead you back to me.
This simple game is the only way I could think to prove to you that no matter what has happened, you’re still my Vane. My gentle, loving boy and the honorable man I knew he would become.
I know that to be true, because that honorable man is holding this letter now and reading my words. Only the Vane I know would fulfill a silly game of lookabout for the purpose of honoring his dead mother’s memory. Set your spirit free of the past, and live your future with all the hopes I had for you.
Your loving mother, always and forever,
Elizabeth
Vane stared at the letter, and at last returned it to the wooden box filled with old diaries, miniatures, and letters he had yet to examine but appeared to represent the history of her family, which had ended with her death. In his head, it was almost as if he could hear his mother’s voice.
Sophia touched his hand. “This is all so wonderful. I couldn’t be more happy for you.”
Vane stood from the floor, eyes wide and amazed.
Sophia peered up at him. “How do you feel now after reading her letter?”
“Broken.” He exhaled and straightened his shoulders. “Healed.”
He pulled her up to stand beside him.
“Then it was all worth it. The ruined cakes.” She beamed. “Lady Meltenbourne. The duel and the surprise Branigan baby.”