by Hale Deborah
After they’d put Wyn to bed that night, Bennett asked, ‘Would you like to have a cup of tea? We could play at cards…or talk.’
‘Talk?’ Caroline sounded as if he’d proposed using her for an archery target.
‘Just talk.’ He tried to make it sound unthreatening. ‘Without the risk of certain small ears overhearing.’
She considered his request, then gave a tentative smile. ‘Very well. Tea and talk.’
A short while later, they sat opposite one another at a small table in the corner of the parlour, sipping their tea in self-conscious silence.
‘Was there something particular you wanted to talk about?’ Caroline prompted him at last.
Bennett nodded. He’d found it a good deal easier to talk in brief snatches while their son was out of earshot. ‘I want to apologise for my remark this afternoon. It was quite thoughtless and I never meant for it to come out the way it did. I wasn’t thinking of Wyn when I said nothing good could come from a marriage of two such opposites. I was only trying to assure you that the troubles between us were not all your fault.’
She hadn’t failed him by taking almost a year to conceive their son or having trouble nursing the baby after he was born. Even the scandal with Astley was not to blame, as bitter a blow as it had dealt his pride. Their marriage had floundered long before that night at Almack’s.
Where was the rush of indignant anger he should be feeling? Bennett wondered as he recalled the wrenching moment that had delivered the death blow to their marriage. Where was the bitterness of betrayal and the sickening sense of humiliation? He strove to summon them, only to find his heart empty of everything but disappointment and regret.
‘I understand.’ Caroline took a sip of her tea. ‘I should not have made such a fuss. I knew what you meant.’
Her answer seemed to lift a weight from his shoulders. ‘That is my point precisely. Throughout our marriage our differences have led us to misjudge one another, to misinterpret everything the other says and does, always jumping to the worst conclusions.’
She gave a rueful nod. ‘I have been guilty of that.’
‘No more than I.’
The way she looked at him, Bennett sensed there was something else very important that she was not saying, leaving it for him to work out on his own. How could she expect that, after all the years he’d failed to understand her?
Just as he was beginning to get an inkling of what she might mean, Caroline deftly nudged the conversation in a less awkward direction. ‘Thank heaven we are learning to be a better father and mother than we were husband and wife. What is my next lesson about managing Wyn?’
Bennett thought for a moment. ‘I was going to stress the importance of maintaining a united front. But you seem to have picked that up on your own. Well done.’
It gratified him to see how that little scrap of praise made her smile and blush. He fought a sudden urge to take her hand, lean across the table and kiss her. Not a kiss of sometimes hostile desire that he’d often wanted in the past. But a kiss of…what?
Contrition? Encouragement? Camaraderie?
Perhaps Caroline sensed the feelings he could not fathom, for she lowered her gaze and fiddled with her tea cup, turning it this way and that on the saucer. ‘I do want to learn. So tell me what lesson comes after that.’
Was she trying to distract him from his dangerous impulses? The least he could do was make the same effort. Rallying his willpower, Bennett turned his thoughts away from the lure of those sweet lips. ‘You need to make it clear to Wyn what the consequences of his actions will be.’
‘Like you did the day he wanted to go out in the rain?’ She lifted her gaze again to regard him as if he were the cleverest man alive. ‘That would be an excellent lesson for Wyn to learn. I wish someone had instilled it in me when I was younger, instead of simply forbidding me to do what I wanted. It only made me rebellious and determined to have my way in spite of them…no matter what the consequences.’
A look of remorse clouded her features and he knew they were both thinking about Fitz Astley. She had not anticipated the consequences of her behaviour that night at Almack’s and Bennett had goaded her into defiance by treating her with less respect than he would have shown a child.
His conscience added another black mark against him.
‘What more do you have to teach me?’ he asked. The tasks had not been too difficult so far, but he feared they would soon become harder.
‘You’ve nearly mastered the art of smiling.’ Her quip coaxed one from him with almost no effort at all. ‘And your handholding is progressing quite well. Now you need to move on to other forms of touch—a pat on the shoulder, ruffling his hair, an embrace, a kiss. I know they’re hard for you because they remind you of your mother.’
‘It isn’t just that.’ Bennett made himself reply quickly before his defences could stifle his confession. Caroline might not realise it, but what he was about to say amounted to an offering of atonement. ‘I’ve been giving the matter some thought and I believe it has to do with how little affection I received from my father. Also the way I was made to suppress feelings of fear and sadness and…longing after my mother went away.’
He glimpsed a flicker of insight in the blue-green depths of Caroline’s eyes. ‘But there’s something I don’t understand. You were never hesitant about…kissing and caressing me when we were first married.’
The reminder roused his barely curbed desire. ‘That was different. Passion is a strong, vital feeling. In some ways it is more akin to anger than to soft sentiments like affection and tenderness.’
Caroline gave a slow, rueful nod that troubled him almost as much as the way his breath was racing and his pulse pounding. Part of him wanted her back even when reason decreed any hope of reconciliation was futile. Bennett recognised the fierce craving he’d felt the first time she had smiled at him across her father’s tea table. But he could not fathom why it had returned to bedevil him at the worst possible time.
Was it because he could not bear to surrender anything to Fitz Astley? Was it because winning Caroline back represented an impossible challenge he could not resist? Was it the same cursed stubbornness that kept him tilting at the windmill of slavery?
Bennett mistrusted what he did not understand, particularly after it had cost him so dearly in the past.
Almost as much as it had cost Caroline.
Chapter Eleven
Was Bennett capable of caring for her in the way she needed, even if he could be persuaded to try?
That thought haunted Caroline for the next several days as Wyn grew stronger and they gradually ventured farther afield in their outings. After they put him to bed in the evenings, they would sometimes go for a walk or drink tea or play cards. During that time, it seemed as if they had talked more than in their whole marriage. At least they talked more about things that mattered.
Chief among those was their son. They shared more advice about how to give Wyn the attention and affection he needed without overindulging him. Caroline was delighted to discover how well some of Bennett’s suggestions worked. Every day, Wyn seemed easier to handle, less apt to fuss when he didn’t get his way, more patient to wait for what he wanted.
There was one outing, however, that he still seemed especially keen to undertake. Every evening at bedtime, he asked, ‘Can we please go visit the castles tomorrow?’
And every evening his parents replied that they would see how he felt the next morning and if the weather was favourable for such an excursion.
At last the perfect day dawned and Wyn could hardly suppress his excitement. After breakfast Mrs Jenkins packed them a basket of Cornish pasties, cheese and other good things. Then they set out along the road that led through Dolphin Town to the other side of the island. Just past the inn they turned north.
‘I still find it hard to believe such a tiny island can boast one castle, let alone two,’ said Caroline as they picked their way over the stony path.
‘They are
more forts than castles,’ Bennett explained. ‘From the time of the Civil War. These islands saw a good deal of fighting for their size. They were the last foothold of the Royalists.’
‘Look, Mama.’ Wyn tugged at her skirt. ‘There’s another island just across that little bit of water.’
Caroline raised one hand to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘It’s very close, isn’t it? Do you suppose a man with a strong arm could hurl a stone across and hit it?’
Wyn nodded. ‘I reckon Papa could.’
‘Your father is a very determined man,’ Caroline agreed. ‘I suspect he could accomplish most anything he set his mind to.’
Did that include forgetting his mother’s betrayal and his bitter feud with Fitz Astley to finally believe that she had not committed adultery? Did it include forgiving the way she’d defied and humiliated him like a headstrong child determined to get her way at any cost? Did it include bearing with their many differences to focus on their one deep bond as parents? It was a great deal to ask and she knew it would be more than she would dare hope from most men. But Bennett Maitland was not most men.
The question remained, would he be willing to try?
‘The water is wider than it looks from up here.’ Her husband seemed uncomfortable with her praise. Did he question her sincerity or did he assume she was putting on an act for Wyn’s sake? ‘That other island is Bryher. Local people come and go between the two islands all the time. At low tide in the summer, it is easy enough to swim across.’
‘Can we visit there some day?’ asked Wyn.
‘Goodness…’ Caroline swung their joined hands in a wide arch ‘…we shall have to stay here a very long time to visit all the places you have a fancy to see.’
Not that she would object to a protracted stay—quite the contrary. Bennett had promised her a month, which was more than generous. But the days were passing far too quickly, like luminous beads slipping off the thread of a broken necklace.
‘There are the castles you’ve been so anxious to see, Wyn.’ Bennett pointed to a circular stone tower perched on the shore and the ruin of a larger fortress sprawling over the crown of the hill behind it. ‘I’m afraid you may not find them as impressive as their names make them sound.’
He seemed worried that their son might be disappointed.
‘I think they’re marvellous!’ Caroline declared. ‘Imagine the stories they might have to tell.’
She glanced towards Bennett. ‘Did you visit these castles when you came to Tresco as a boy?’
She could picture him walking along this path, holding his mother’s hand just as Wyn clung to hers.
‘Every year. My mother and I would pack a lunch and eat it up on top of Cromwell’s Tower or among the ruins of the old castle. I always looked forward to our autumn holiday. Mother seemed so much more carefree than during the rest of the year.’ He seemed to shake himself from his reverie. ‘Now, which of the castles would you like to explore first?’
Wyn looked down to the shore, then up to the hilltop. ‘Which do you think, Mama?’
‘Whichever you choose will be fine with me, dearest.’ Caroline smiled down at him. ‘As long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy.’
Now that she had learned she didn’t always need to give him his way in a desperate bid to keep his love, she’d begun to relax and enjoy their time together in a way she never could before. It had not been an easy lesson by any means, and she owed it to Bennett for teaching her, even when she’d resisted learning.
‘That one first.’ Wyn pointed to the round tower perched precariously on a spit of land protruding into the narrowest part of the strait between Bryher and Tresco. ‘Can we climb to the top?’
Indeed they could, and did, by a staircase that wound around inside the wall of the tower. Bennett refused to let Wyn venture into any of the lower chambers for the floor timbers were clearly rotten. The stone roof of the tower was still as sturdy as ever, though.
Bennett hoisted Wyn on to his shoulders so the boy could see over the parapet. ‘This is where the cannon would have stood to fire on any enemy ships trying to sail through the Channel between the islands.’
As Caroline watched her husband and son, she was delighted to see how much more at ease Bennett had become with the child. Though physical contact still seemed to make him a little self-conscious, there could be no mistaking how much he enjoyed their new sense of closeness.
She and Wyn peppered Bennett with questions about the history of the castle and the conflicts in which it had played a part. He proved a font of fascinating information.
Later, they scrambled up the steep, rock-strewn hill to the ruin of the older castle. After they admired the fine view of Bryher, Wyn challenged his mother to a game of hide and seek among the tumbled stone walls.
‘Join us.’ Caroline beckoned her husband.
Bennett shook his head. ‘I’d rather watch from a distance to make certain Wyn doesn’t venture anywhere he might come to harm.’
‘As you wish.’ She began counting loudly to twenty.
Not long ago, she might have taken Bennett’s remark as a criticism of her. Now she understood that each of them was expressing their love for Wyn in the way that came most naturally. But that did not mean they must keep to one role exclusively.
After she and Wyn had played for a while, Caroline approached her husband and gave him a playful nudge. ‘Now you take a turn finding him. I’ll warn you, he’s clever at finding places to hide.’
When Bennett hesitated, she lowered her voice so their son would not overhear. ‘I will keep watch to make certain he does not come to any harm. You can trust me to do that, can you not?’
It was something of a step forwards for her that she felt confident to watch over Wyn. Learning that Bennett did not blame her for what she’d considered some of her greatest failures made her view their marriage in a new light. The fact that he had sought her advice about showing their son more affection gave her a greater belief in her abilities. Every step she took towards being a better mother to Wyn and drawing closer to Bennett brought a rewarding sense of accomplishment. It proved a potent antidote to her self-doubt and fear of failure.
‘Of course I can trust you.’ Bennett replied with scarcely a beat of hesitation.
Considering his harsh experience of betrayal, Caroline felt encouraged by his faith in her.
This island had a great deal in common with her husband, she reflected as she watched him and Wyn hunt one another through the ruins of the old fortress. From what she’d seen of Tresco, it was a place of stark beauty with a rich, mysterious history. But it was also harsh, forbidding and bristling with defences. At its worst, it could be dangerous to the weak or unwary.
Was she a self-destructive fool to risk her hopes and her heart on a man like that? Especially after he had told her she could never be the kind of woman he wanted?
He trusted her? Bennett could scarcely believe he’d spoken those words, least of all to the woman who had conspired with his worst enemy to make him the laughing stock of London.
But these isolated islands seemed so far removed from all that, as if his family had sailed more than thirty miles out into the ocean, perhaps even back through time. True, he had carried a great deal of resentment, suspicion and regret here with him, like so much heavy ballast of questionable value. But bit by bit he had begun to discard those encumbrances. Though he felt rather vulnerable without them, he felt freer, too.
Free to acknowledge that when it came to their son’s welfare he could depend upon Caroline to care as much as he did and do whatever circumstances required for Wyn’s sake. Free to show his love for their son in more than controlled, structured ways, with a casual touch or a spontaneous smile. Even a game that had no point or purpose beyond enjoying their time together.
Exercising that unaccustomed freedom, Bennett abandoned decorum and threw himself into playing ‘hide and seek’. After eating their picnic lunch with hearty appetites, they played a little longer before
finally heading back home.
Wyn could scarcely keep his eyes open through dinner. That evening when his parents tucked him into bed, he did not put up even a token resistance.
‘Sweet dreams, dearest.’ Caroline strewed the child’s brow with kisses, then swept him into an affectionate embrace.
Wyn yawned deeply. ‘Goodnight, Mama.’
When she rose from the child’s bedside, Caroline cast Bennett an encouraging look. He knew what she wanted him to do and he had been working up to it. Two nights ago he’d patted his son’s shoulder. Last night he had ruffled Wyn’s hair. What would he do tonight?
Perhaps because Wyn was half-asleep, Bennett felt less awkward about putting his arms around his son’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his forehead. ‘Goodnight, son. Rest well.’
He tried to pull away and might have succeeded if Wyn had been fully awake. Instead, the child flung his small arms around Bennett’s neck and squeezed tight.
‘Night-night, Papa.’ He planted a hearty kiss on his father’s cheek.
Bennett was not certain how he should react, but he sensed Caroline would be disappointed if he ended the embrace too abruptly. So he held his son close, his tense muscles gradually relaxing until Wyn’s grip slackened and his breath became a soft, slow drone. Then he eased the child back on to his pillow and tucked the bedclothes around him.
When he straightened up and glanced at Caroline, he found her beaming with approval. ‘Well done. I knew you could do it.’