by A. O'Connor
“Victoria, I’m in love with you!” Charles said with a sense of urgency.
Victoria sat silent, unable to speak.
Charles reached over and grabbed her hand. “Victoria, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“Charles!”
“You’re the only thing I care for any more. The estate, Arabella, even this house they all mean nothing to me. It’s only you I love.”
A sudden breeze came through the French windows, scattering the writing paper there across the room.
Startled, Victoria and Charles looked at the papers. Charles got up and walked over to the French windows and closed them shut before locking them.
Arabella was left standing outside beside the windows, leaning against the wall. She edged her way closer to the closed doors and strained to hear but she could no longer hear anything. Turning she quickly walked down the steps from the terrace and aimlessly walked back towards the gardens in a trance.
Charles came and sat down beside Victoria again.
“I’ve taken you by surprise,” he said, seeing the expression on her face.
“You’ve completely shocked me!”
“I had to say it. I can’t just let you walk out of my life,” he said.
He reached over for her hand and she quickly pulled it away.
“How dare you! How dare you, Charles!” she said angrily.
“I only speak the truth.”
“Truth! You don’t know the meaning of the word. Truth is just a word to you with nothing behind it. I am your brother’s wife – does that mean nothing to you?”
“Of course it does! It shows how much I care for you, the fact that I’m saying this to you and making my feelings known. Knowing that this could destroy my relationship with my brother.”
“Your relationship with your brother! It clearly means nothing to you! You demonstrated that fifteen years ago when you robbed him of his fiancée. And now you’re willing to do it again and rob him of his wife!” Victoria was astounded.
Charles reached out for her hand again.
“Don’t even touch me!” she snapped, standing up. She began to pace up and down. “To think that I convinced Harrison to give you a second chance. I forced him to befriend you again against his better judgement.”
“I know what I am, I don’t deny it. But my feelings for you are real. Nothing has ever been more real to me in my life.”
“You’ve used our friendship as a trick to try and get me into bed!”
“I’m not talking about an affair, Victoria. I’m talking about you and me being together permanently. I’ve told you, I’ll leave Arabella. I’ve also come into a windfall. With that and the money I’ll get when I sell the estate, we can go and live anywhere. You can be Lady Armstrong, the Lady Armstrong that should always have been.”
“I don’t want to be Lady Armstrong, or be anywhere near you ever again.”
“But we could have the world at our feet!”
“And leave a family in chaos and destruction in your wake? Are you mad?”
“But our friendship, our intimacy –”
“Our intimacy! Charles, I’m not more intimate with you than I am with James, or Emily – or your mother! Get this straight – it’s Harrison I love, with all my heart and soul. I would do anything for him. I have no feelings towards you other than friendship – a friendship you have now destroyed for good.”
She walked quickly to the door.
“Victoria!”
She turned and looked at him as she opened the door. “Go and sort out your life, Charles – it’s a complete mess.” She walked out and slammed the door after her.
He got up and walked to the window and watched her hurry across the forecourt to her motor car. Getting in, she started it up and took off as quickly as she could.
chapter 74
“And how are things on the estate today?” asked Charles as James walked into the room.
“Quiet. There doesn’t seem to be much agitation luckily.”
“For once,” said Charles. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a few changes I’ve decided to make.”
“Really?” James became worried.
“Yes. I’ve been giving things a lot of thought . . . I’ve decided if the bastards want the land so much, they can have it. I’m selling the estate, the greatest part of it anyway.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m tired of the whole thing, and now with the government providing money for a buyout – well, I’d be mad not to take it.”
James shook his head in dismay. “And three hundred years of history will be wiped out?”
“Oh, come on, James, all the gentry families are doing it. It’s more bother than it’s worth. And with the money I get – well, I should be secure for life.”
“And what about the rest of us?”
“The rest of who? The family? Everyone has moved on, James, except for you. None of the family is interested in this estate any more. Mother is no longer Lady Armstrong and so it doesn’t affect her. I don’t intend to sell the house here or Hunter’s Farm, so she’ll remain living there.”
“And what about me?”
“Well, I can’t be responsible for you any more, James.”
“But – but my whole life has been this estate!”
“You’ll have to find a new life for yourself.”
“You’ve used me. You used me to run things when it suited you. To talk to the farmers because you couldn’t talk to them and to carry out your dirty work, and now you’re getting rid of me in the same ruthless way you got rid of those farmers and their families that you evicted.”
“In a few years there won’t be any great estates left in Ireland. This country isn’t conducive to them, as we have painfully witnessed recently.”
James looked fiercely at him. “Father always said you weren’t cut out to be a Lord Armstrong. He said you wouldn’t be able for the job and he was right!”
Charles became angry. “Father wasn’t everything you thought he was either, you know.”
“He was wonderful, and he was so ashamed of you!”
“Was he indeed? As I said, Father was not everything you thought he was – he was not that great man you put on a pedestal.”
“You don’t even deserve to talk about him. You’ve thrown away his legacy.”
“His legacy! He came to his legacy by chance! That day he collapsed, the day you said you heard us having the screaming match . . .”
“What about it?”
“He told me that day . . . he told me that he was a result of an affair his mother, our grandmother, Lady Anna, had with a peasant. Lord Edward Armstrong was not his father, some random peasant was!”
“How dare you try to taint his name!” James erupted in anger.
“It’s the truth! I accused him of lying, but he wasn’t.”
James sat up in his chair. “I don’t believe you, Charles. Why would he never tell anyone? He would have told me – we were so close – if it were the truth!”
“He didn’t tell you because he was ashamed, and he knew the consequences of revealing the truth. He never told anybody, only me – that day, in a fit of anger.”
James’s eyes filled with realisation. He felt shocked, but the feelings were quickly replaced with feeling sorry for the father he adored who carried that shame all his life. “I’d never have turned on him over something like that.”
Charles looked at him coldly. “Every time I look at you, I see him, that peasant who slept with Lady Anna. I don’t see it in any of the rest of us. Maybe that blood was thinned out by Lady Anna’s genes, and our mother’s . . . But with you, it is there. The way you mix with them, talk with them, enjoy their company . . . sleep with them even! With your tart from the town. You’re one of them – you’re not one of us. Whoever our real grandfather was, that’s your legacy. And like him you’ll be landless and penniless. Because now there’s no role for you here any more and that’s all you’ll en
d up being.”
James stood up and turned and walked quickly from the room.
chapter 75
Arabella was in complete shock over the next couple of days. It wasn’t as though Charles’ feelings for Victoria were a shock to her. She had always had her strong suspicions. But that Victoria had reciprocated them stunned her – that they were having an affair behind her and Harrison’s backs. She had never liked Victoria, a fact she had never tried to even hide. But one thing she had thought was that Victoria was virtuous. That Victoria, with all her self-righteousness and confidence, was really no better than a woman like Marianne Radford astounded her. But then Arabella realised she shouldn’t be at all surprised when it came to Charles. Hadn’t she succumbed to his charms herself all those years ago?
She thought hard about how to deal with the situation. There was no point in confronting Charles – she knew that would never work, or had never worked in the past. She thought about how she had dealt with him when she had become pregnant with Prudence, involving both their parents. She thought how she had seen off Marianne Radford by involving her husband, the colonel. The way to deal with Charles was always through a third party.
Arabella knew Victoria went into Castlewest most afternoons to do some shopping or chat to the locals. Arabella instructed Fennell to have the carriage brought to the front of the house for her.
Charles was at his desk in the library, staring out the window, going over the encounter with Victoria. He remembered her anger and her reaction so vividly, the embarrassment and the shame he had felt. How had he got it so wrong? How had he let his emotions carry him away? Now he had lost Victoria’s affection forever. They would move back to the States and he would probably never see her again. As he sat there he thought about his life. Everything that should have gone right for him had gone wrong. And Harrison had ended up with everything he wanted. He looked at the letter on his desk from Hugh Fitzroy with a copy of the transaction paying the £20,000 into his account. He looked at the accompanying note from Hugh on Castlewest Arms Hotel headed notepaper telling him he expected Charles now to make Emily see sense and return to him without delay. Charles got up and went to where he kept his bank details and locked the papers in the filing drawer.
At least his money troubles were over for now.
Emily walked into the room. “Hello there, Charles. I just wondered if you wanted to go out for a ride? It might take your mind off everything going on?”
“No, Emily, I don’t feel like it . . . sit down a minute, I want to talk to you.”
She sat down on the couch and he came and joined her.
“I’ve got some news for you.”
“Oh?”
“Hugh Fitzroy is here.”
“Here?” She got a fright and looked around anxiously.
“He’s staying in the Castlewest Arms.”
“How do you know?”
“He contacted me and I went to meet him,” said Charles.
Emily stiffened. “Well – what does he want?”
“You, basically. He’s come to fetch you.”
Emily shook her head in disbelief. “I’m never going back to that man or that marriage.”
Charles nodded. “That’s what I told him . . . I told him to clear off and never to bother you again.”
Emily visibly relaxed. “Thank you, Charles.”
“I told him he was never to make contact with you or me again.”
“Thank you!” Emily leaned over and hugged him tightly.
The carriage pulled up outside Ocean’s End and Arabella saw that Victoria’s motor car wasn’t there.
“Wait here for me, I won’t be long,” Arabella said to the driver as she got out and walked up to the front door of the house. She knocked loudly.
A minute later Harrison opened the door.
“Arabella! This is unexpected,” said Harrison.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” He showed her in and closed the front door.
“Victoria isn’t here, if you’re looking for her,” he said as he led her into the parlour.
“It’s you I’ve come to see,” said Arabella as she looked around the room.
Harrison nodded, suddenly feeling nervous. He hadn’t been alone with Arabella since they came to live in Ireland, and he wondered what on earth she could want.
“A drink? Or tea?” he asked.
“No, I won’t be staying long,” she said, sitting down on one of the striped cream and red couches.
“All right,” he said, sitting down opposite her. There was an awkward silence.
“How can I help you, Arabella?”
“I’ve come to talk to you about my husband and your wife.”
“What about them?”
“There’s no easy way to say this . . . they are having an affair.”
Harrison stared at her in bewilderment. “And your evidence for this is?”
“I found them together – expressing undying love.”
Harrison eyes were cold and glaring. “You found them together? Where?”
“They were in the drawing room at Armstrong House. The French windows were open and I heard everything.”
Harrison sat in silence for a long time. “I’d like you to leave my house, Arabella.”
She was astounded. “Did you not just hear what I said?”
“I heard and I don’t believe it. Now, please leave my house.”
“Your house? You mean the house Charles found for you and Victoria as he wheedled his way back into your affections, particularly hers! He’s been playing you for a fool, Harrison, they both have.”
“Victoria would never be unfaithful to me.”
“Oh really? Do you really believe that? And tell me, Harrison, when I was having an affair behind your back with Charles for months, and it was months, Harrison, I expect you never believed it of me either?”
Harrison became angry. “You were nothing like Victoria!”
“I think you’ll find we’re much more alike than you think! We seem to share the same unfortunate taste in men!”
“Whatever problems you and Charles are having in that minefield of a marriage of yours, do not try and drag me and Victoria into it.”
“Drag her into it? From what I heard she went running into it – running into his bed.” She became angry. “The same way I did all those years ago!”
“You’re a bitch, Arabella. You always were. I don’t know what’s going on in that twisted mind of yours – jealousy, I guess. Jealousy that Victoria and I are so happy and you and Charles are so miserable.”
“I can assure you Charles is not unhappy – he’s very happy fornicating with your wife!”
Harrison stood up abruptly. “Get out! Get out of this house, Arabella.”
Arabella stood up. “I don’t know why I expected you to have a different reaction from the one you’re having. I’ve just told you your wife is sleeping with your brother and you react in the same weak way you did all those years ago with me. You’re not going to do anything about this affair?”
“I told you to get out.”
“You’ve been a fool for Charles all your life, Harrison, and you always will be. He’s done it to you again! After all these years . . . and he did it the same way with Victoria as he did with me. Pretending to be your friend while he seduces your women.”
“I won’t tell you again!”
Arabella walked to the door and then turned and looked at him. “Maybe you should ask yourself what is it about you that drives your women to Charles? From what I see here today it’s because you’re weak. Maybe if there was some strength in you, some excitement, some fight, we wouldn’t have left you.”
Arabella turned and walked out, slamming the door after her.
chapter 76
Emily closed the front door of Hunter’s Farm behind her.
“Darling, is that you?” asked Margaret from the parlour.
“Yes, Mother,” answered Emily walking down the
short hallway and into the parlour.
Margaret was sitting on a couch, reading. “Did you go for a ride with Charles?”
“No, he didn’t feel like it.”
Margaret shook her head. “I can imagine he had more things on his mind.” She sighed loudly. “Your father would not believe what’s been going on. He fought all his life to avoid this kind of trouble. Maybe I should have said something earlier to Charles. Tried to divert it from escalating.”
“You certainly never held back in telling me what to do!”
“That was different. I couldn’t undermine Charles in his position in life. Where will it all end? I even keep a revolver in that bureau drawer now after the attack on Armstrong House last week. It’s the children I’m concerned about – Prudence and Pierce.”
Emily came over and kissed her. “Don’t worry about it, Mama. I’m sure everything will be all right.”
Smiling at her mother, she left the room. She went upstairs to her bedroom, thinking about her conversation with Charles. It unnerved her greatly to think Hugh was only a few miles down the road. She knew Hugh and he would not just go back to London after a few harsh words from Charles, as he seemed to think. He would stay there trying to get her back. It had to be made clear to Hugh that she would never return to him.
Emily steadied herself as she walked down the corridor on the top floor of the Castlewest Arms Hotel that evening, having got Hugh’s room number from reception. She paused and then knocked on the door.
A few seconds later Hugh opened the door and, not looking surprised to see her, said, “Come in.”