by Jane Godman
Then, abruptly, Uther’s hands and lips stilled. He stared down at my face as though seeing me for the first time, almost as though he was listening to something. Some inner prompting. And I had the oddest feeling in that moment that he was fighting an internal battle. That he was himself, but not there with me at all. The thought was so fleeting I couldn’t catch it to examine it. Then he took my face in his hands and kissed me so tenderly that I wanted to weep.
“I think we should be terribly proper and wait until we are married, my sweet,” he murmured. I was torn between the raging desire that he had kindled within me and a sense of delicious pleasure at this unexpected chivalry. “After all, we have the rest of eternity together. Just one thing?” His hands busied themselves again, this time restoring my clothing to normality. The smile that was unique to him, so full of mischief and tenderness, flashed in the depths of his eyes. He took my hand and placed it very deliberately against the straining hardness of his erection. “I think we should get married very soon, don’t you?”
Chapter Five
“Annie, he is Uther.”
I suppose I should have been able to foresee that response from Rudi. In his eyes, my announcement was marginally worse than a declaration that I intended to marry Bluebeard.
“I love him,” I said. How could I possibly explain that the fact that he was Uther—whose face had haunted me all my life, through all the lives I might have lived—made that emotion stronger?
“Are you quite sure what you feel for him is love?” It seemed a strange thing for my usually perceptive brother to say. Then it struck me. Was he asking if I had mistaken lust for a purer emotion? I felt a blush tinge my cheeks. I was usually the forthright twin, but this was a conversation I did not want to pursue.
“Would you still ask me that question if we waited six months?” I countered.
“You’re my sister, Annie. I’m supposed to look after you. Particularly when Ouma isn’t here,” he said, his face registering his hurt at my mistrust. Then he sighed. Somewhat belatedly, he held out his arms. “Congratulations.”
Finty’s reaction was predictable. “Gosh, Annie, you will be the next Countess of Athal after my darling Boo,” she exclaimed, kissing my cheek. Even she, I noticed, cast a doubtful look in Uther’s direction. Unlike Rudi, however, she refrained from voicing her misgivings.
The reaction that caused me most concern, however, came from Nicca. When Uther informed him about our engagement, he simply turned on his heel, walking out of the parlour door and into the garden. It seemed so out of character that I simply stared after him in surprise. Uther gave a shrug of annoyance, but I decided to follow him. He would soon, after all, be my brother-in-law. I might not be his first choice of bride for Uther, but I decided it was up to me to attempt to repair our stormy relationship. I found him standing just outside the door, gazing out at the ocean view.
I went to stand next to him, leaning my elbows on a waist-high decorative wall and looking out at the leached grey fury of the Atlantic. Something inside me, a half memory, tried to conjure up the emotions I had felt when I first came here. I tried not to want this. I attempted to force my mind to see again the vast, reckless mountains I loved and feel the homesickness that had torn my heart in two. I wanted to miss the Drakensberg Mountains because I knew I should, but there was that within me now that made those African scenes too distant, too hazy. Like a story told to me by someone else. Should I feel sad that meeting Uther had changed who I was? I couldn’t. No matter what had shaped me, it had brought me here to this day. To this destiny.
“Can you be happy for us, Nicca?” I asked, not looking at him.
“No,” he replied bluntly. I risked a sideways glance at his profile and was shocked at its rigid lines. “You don’t know my brother, Annie.”
“We haven’t known each other for long, that’s true,” I admitted. “But when we know something is right, must we wait because convention demands it?”
“It isn’t right.” He turned to face me and the endless blue of his eyes was darkened by storm clouds. “I could tell you what sort of man Uther really is, Annie. But would you listen?” I felt my own ready anger flash to the surface in response. Although I tried to get it under control, I knew that he had seen it ignite. “Exactly. You are as stubborn as all hell. You’ve made up your mind, and you would just convince yourself that anything I said arose out of jealousy because you know how I feel about you.”
I took a half step back. Because his meaning was clear and it wasn’t what I expected. Until that instant, I hadn’t known that he felt anything for me other than intense dislike. But the hurt and longing in his eyes told me a different story. So, in an uncharacteristically cowardly manner, I chose to ignore what I saw in his expression. I had no words of comfort to offer him. There was no place in my heart to acknowledge that I was inflicting pain on a man I knew was essentially good and honourable.
Nicca’s glance told me that he fully understood the conflicting emotions that flitted through my mind. “Don’t worry, Annie. I’m not expecting you to respond with sympathetic platitudes. It would hardly be your style, after all,” he said with a harsh, humourless laugh. I remained where I was, still shocked at the realisation that his disapproval had come about not because he thought I would be a bad wife to Uther. His opinion was entirely to the contrary. The verdict was unanimous. Uther, it seemed, was not, even among his own family, considered good husband material.
Tristan Martyn looked Uther up and down with interest. “Well, there could never be any denying that you are a Jago,” he said as they shook hands. “Indeed, you are more like Cad in appearance than either of his sons.” He turned to Nicca and his features appeared to relax. “You, on the other hand, are the living spit of your maternal grandfather. That old rogue was a member of my club. Like you, he was as big as a house, a fine figure of a man, and a demon with a billiards cue.”
He was a handsome, straight-backed man in his early sixties with white hair and eyes that were so blue they would shame a summer sky. Finty greeted him with delight, and Eleanor’s smile, for the first time since I had met her, held genuine pleasure. The obvious affection between the old lady and her brother’s former estate manager intrigued me so much that I asked Finty about it.
“I always thought,” she said, dropping her voice slightly, “that Uncle Tristan must be an illegitimate Jago. He was treated as a member of the family by Cad, Boo and Aunt Eleanor, you see. There was some great mystery surrounding Cad’s older brother, Eddie Jago, so I suspect he may have been Uncle Tristan’s father.” And, yes, I could see now that the blue of Tristan’s eyes was the same blue as Eleanor’s. It was just that in her eyes, the vivid colour had been dimmed by time and tragedy.
I liked Tristan instantly, and now that it was to be my home, I was eager to learn as much as I could about Tenebris. Who better to teach me than this man who had painstakingly made it his life’s work? Uther, on the other hand, seemed curiously indifferent and cavalier about his noble heritage.
Tristan was only too happy to oblige me and feed my curiosity. We sat together at a desk in what had been Cad Jago’s study. He showed me a leather-bound book with heavy, vellum-lined pages. One of the jobs he had undertaken when he worked for Cad, he explained, was to draw up a detailed Jago family tree.
“If we start with the members of the family in living memory—those that Eleanor and I knew—we have Tynan Jago and his wife Lucy. Or, to use her full name, Lucia.”
I frowned. Lucia. The name should not have meant anything to me. But it did. I shrugged off the vague feeling of unease that trickled down my spine. “Finty told me that Tynan built this house.”
“Tynan Jago was a fine man. One whom I admired greatly. But he had a troubled start to life. His parents were murdered when he was just a baby. Originally it was thought that his father killed his mother and then committed suicide, a dreadful enough scenario. Later it transpired that they were both murdered by Tynan’s uncle.” He watched my face from un
der lowered brows as he spoke the next words. “The uncle was called Uther.” My face must have registered my surprise because he nodded. “It appears that the secret was extremely well kept. So much so that it looks as if the name was used in tribute for the current earl. No one who knew of the proclivities of the original Uther would ever have dreamed of naming their child after him.”
He drew a silver-framed portrait from a drawer as he spoke and slid it across the desk to me. I studied it in silence. Apart from the fact that the man it depicted had a narrow scar marring his left cheek, it could have been my Uther. In their perfect, arrogant masculinity, they were identical. Wordlessly, I passed the portrait back to Tristan. I wished Rudi had been there to listen to this story. The mystery of the Uther we saw as children was explained. There were two Uthers, both with the same face. The man I was going to marry was not, after all, the ogre who had haunted my childhood. So where was the sense of relief I should have felt?
“Uther’s dark deeds did not end there. Between them, he and his sister, Demelza, hatched a plan to make it appear that Tynan was mad. Demelza was slowly poisoning him. But Uther was not prepared to let the Jago name die out, so they brought Lucy, who was a distant relative and alone and penniless, to Tenebris. They planned to marry her to Tynan and, once she was carrying his child, they were going to kill Tynan and make it look like he had taken his own life.”
“Tristan, this sounds very much like the plot of a Victorian melodrama rather than a family history.”
“For the Jagos it is quite tame,” he assured me. “If you look back along the family tree, there have been far worse villainies.”
“How were Uther and Demelza prevented from carrying this plan through to completion?”
“Uther’s own grip on sanity was tenuous. He became obsessed with Lucy. There is a Jago legend about an evil ancestor, Arwen Jago, who fell in love with a beautiful young girl called Lucia.” There was that name again. New to me and yet so darkly familiar. I recalled Uther’s words about Arwen Jago and the “true line” of Athal. It was as if I was being reminded of these things rather than hearing them for the first time. “In his darkest moments, Uther considered himself to be the reincarnation of Arwen, and he started to believe that he had finally been reunited with his Lucia. Lucy herself, however, had fallen in love with Tynan. They were married on his twenty-first birthday and planned to run away together. Uther had Tynan imprisoned in the dungeons and planned to take his place in the marriage bed. Demelza found out and, in a fit of jealousy—for she and Uther were incestuous lovers—killed him and set fire to the castle. Demelza died in the blaze, but Lucy and Tynan escaped.”
I shivered, gazing around me. I was seeing the beautiful, mellow house in a different light now that I knew the tragic story of its birth. “And despite all of that, Tynan and Lucy went on to live happily here?”
He looked out of the window, toward the cliff and the soaring ocean beyond. I felt he was staring back into another time. “In many ways, I think they did. But the past never completely let them go. There were always rumours that the ghosts of Uther and Demelza lived on, even in this new house. Tynan and Lucy had three children. Eddie, Charles—who was always known as Cad—and Eleanor. Two sons and a daughter. A haunting echo of the earlier sibling grouping of Ruan, Tynan’s father, Uther and Demelza. Eleanor is, of course, the only surviving member of the family. Cad used to joke that he was cursed because he had inherited Uther Jago’s face. The locals said he was Uther born again because he looked so like him. He even had Uther’s devilish smile.” I shuddered slightly at the thought of my own Uther’s smile, so impish and full of mischief. “I think even Lucy and Tynan worried sometimes that Uther really had found his way back from the grave, particularly as Cad was rather wild before he met Bouche.” He turned his head, as though remembering my presence. “I’m sorry, my dear, these memories are making me feel woolly-headed. Do you think we could go for a stroll?”
We collected our coats, and although the wind was brisk, the sun peeped from behind the clouds and did its best to cheer us. In my case, at least, it did not succeed. The dark Jago history had made me feel restless and uncomfortable. Leading me along the cliff path, Tristan continued with his story.
“Eddie and Cad never got along. In fact it would be fair to say they hated each other in spite of Lucy’s efforts to pour oil onto the troubled waters of their relationship. When they grew up, they went their separate ways. Eddie was artistic and he went to live in Paris where he indulged his passion for painting. Cad, though labelled the ‘wild son,’ supported Tynan with the management of the estate. Between them, they built the Athal estate into a huge business empire. When it was deemed time for Eddie, who was actually the heir to all this wealth, to return and learn the ropes of the business, the gulf between the brothers was at its widest. Eddie came back to Tenebris with his fiancée, a stunning Hungarian beauty called Dita Varga. You may have heard her being referred to by her famous nickname—Bouche?”
I felt my brow wrinkle in consternation. “But Bouche married Cad, didn’t she?”
“She did indeed marry Cad. They were deeply in love and very happy. In truth, she and Eddie were never actually engaged. Bouche, or Dita as I knew her when I first met her, was on the run from a dangerous brigand who viewed her as his property. She and Eddie were friends, nothing more, but he relied heavily on her for moral support. So, when he had to come back here and face his demons, he wanted to come with her at his side. It suited them both to pretend they were betrothed.”
“His demons?”
His face was sad. “I’m not sure any of us will ever know Eddie Jago’s full story. There was a series of dreadful murders of young girls during the time Eddie was in Paris and here at Athal when he returned. They stopped when he disappeared.” We had reached an arrowhead-shaped point in the cliff top so that we appeared to be standing on the very edge of the world. “For many years it was assumed that he had killed himself, jumped to his death from this very spot.”
“You seem to be suggesting that he did not,” I said, gazing down into the churning abyss.
“It is possible that he did not die,” he said. “There is a chance—awful though it is to contemplate—that he survived and went on to commit the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888.”
“You mean that Eddie may have been the killer known as Jack the Ripper?” I was aghast at the thought.
“The similarities between those murders and the ones that took place here and in Paris make it a possibility.”
“Liewe God! What is this family that I am marrying into? I notice that Uther made quite sure of my answer before he let me hear any of this,” I laughed, although there was no humour in the sound. “Although, to be fair to him, I don’t think he knows any of these stories. Thank goodness what you are telling me is all in the past.”
Tristan regarded me thoughtfully, then, with gentle courtesy, offered me his arm. We began to walk back toward the house.
“Why was she called ‘Bouche’?” I turned my attention to the Jago family member who interested me most of all.
“It was Cad’s name for her.” An affectionate, reminiscent light touched his eyes. “She was extraordinarily beautiful and had a lovely mouth, so he called her his belle bouche because of it.”
“I think you were very fond of her,” I said, observing his softened expression.
“I was fond of them both. They were good to me.” His handsome face was sombre when he turned to me. “They welcomed me into their home and brought me up alongside their sons, and they need not have done. Because not only was I illegitimate, I was born of another incestuous relationship. Eddie Jago was my father and Eleanor, his sister, is my mother.”
The story of Lucia’s Glade was enshrined in Jago legend. Intrigued, yet oddly repelled by it, I asked Tristan to take me there. I was relying on his storytelling prowess to bring the tale to life. What started out as a quiet walk for the two of us became a major expedition, however, with the whole family—exce
pt Nicca, who looked faintly bored and vetoed the suggestion, and Eleanor—involved. At Finty’s prompting, Mrs Winrow provided a picnic lunch, which was packed into a basket the shape and approximate size of a coffin. This impressive item was transported into the forest by two sweating footmen, who had gone on ahead to set up a trestle table and chairs.
“I only wanted to come for a stroll to see the place where such a fascinating story started,” I whispered apologetically to Tristan as we followed a narrow, mossy path. It led us away from the ocean and into the eerie silence of the forest.
“Lucia’s Glade has its own particular grip on the heart of the Jagos,” he explained. “So perhaps we are inclined to overrate its charms and elevate its status.”
The trees gave way abruptly to grass the vivid green of an envious heart. The beauty of this small clearing bloomed for the most part unseen. I looked around at the way the light stole through the surrounding trees and played a symphony on crystal droplets of untouched dew. Thick clover covered the budding ground and dried potpourri mounds of leaves filled each nook and hollow. This should have been a place of peace and enchantment. It wasn’t. Had I been alone I would have turned and run. Lucia’s Glade, like her name, filled my very soul with dread.
“Isn’t it delightful?” Finty asked, in between directing the footmen to set out the picnic. It would have been too much to say that Rudi shared the same depth of feeling I was experiencing, but he nonetheless appeared uncomfortable. He looked about him as though expecting to see something abhorrent emerging from the leafy shadows. Even Uther was restless, his golden eyes cautious and the brightness of his smile somewhat dimmed. Only Finty seemed to still feel the outing was celebratory. Her eyes sparkled with excitement and she took an almost proprietorial pride in ensuring we were all comfortable. She had turned the picnic into a bizarrely formal arrangement with cut-glass flutes of champagne and bone-china plates among the ancient trees, new weeds and stealthy creeping ivy. I wondered at the flimsiness of Finty’s emotions. Could she really be unaware of the undercurrents that affected the rest of us?