A Sense of Misgiving (Perceptions Book 3)

by Wendy Soliman

  A tingle of awareness trickled down her spine when his arm bushed against her. She sent him a look of mild astonishment, thinking she must have imagined her reaction. This was Paul. Solid, dependable, fun-loving Paul. A man she had known since her infancy. A man who had made some sort of sacrifice that had prevented him from carving out an independent career on his own terms. A man who could achieve anything he set out to do, but who chose to remain here as Luke’s right-hand. A man who never complained, exercised endless patience and who she appeared to be noticing as a woman was supposed to notice a man for the very first time.

  How peculiar.

  Mary shook off her sudden and turbulent reaction to him, imagining she must still be unsettled following her narrow escape from Captain Redfern. But she had never responded to the captain’s accidental touch quite so violently. She felt tremors still trickling through her. Pleasurable tremors that she’d never experienced before that pooled deep within her core and spread throughout her body. Her stomach felt weightless and her pulse quickened. It was most unnerving.

  ‘Thank you.’ She concentrated her burning face on her sketchpad, but sensed Paul’s gaze fixed upon her profile. Had he felt it, too? ‘You’re right. I can quite see it now.’

  ‘Are you really recovered from your ordeal, or do you seek to reassure me?’ he asked her after a short silence in which they both gave their full attention to their sketches.

  ‘I believe so. I feel that if I allow myself to wallow in self-pity then he would have won.’ Mary sighed. ‘I was an idiot to be so easily taken in by the man and cause so much trouble.’

  ‘Perhaps you should reconsider your decision not to have a season,’ Paul remarked. ‘The rules are more stringent in the capital. You would not be allowed to venture out without a maid or some other form of chaperone in such an environment.’

  Mary shuddered. ‘Even so, the thought does not appeal. There are just as many fortune hunters’ prowling the salons of the capital, I’m sure.’ She sighed. ‘I shall never really know if I am being pursued for myself or my fortune.’

  ‘If any man did not want you for who you are then he would be a damned fool who did not deserve you.’

  Paul spoke with such violent passion that Mary sent him a surprised look. ‘Thank you, but you are biased.’

  ‘And you should not doubt your own good qualities.’

  ‘Ha! I must sound terribly spoiled to you. I have everything I could wish for. A comfortable home, a loving family and financial security—and yet I appear dissatisfied.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Unlike you, no sacrifices have been asked of me.’

  Annoyingly, he didn’t cast any light on the precise nature of the sacrifice he’d been required to make.

  ‘It is entirely natural that you should want your share of attention. You deserve it, and you should know that the reasons for its bestowal are entirely genuine. There is nothing spoiled about that.’ He smiled at her, suddenly looking impossibly glamorous and worldly-wise. ‘You will know when your passions are genuinely engaged.’

  ‘That’s what Flora said when I felt muddled over my feelings for the captain. She seemed to think that if I needed to question what I felt, then I didn’t…well, feel it.’

  ‘Flora is wise, and you could do much worse than listen to her advice.’ The wind picked up, the heron took to the wing with a loud squawk and it began to drizzle. ‘Come along,’ he said, picking up her supplies and tucking them beneath his arm. ‘We had best get back to the house before the heavens open.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Matters in Sussex delayed Luke longer than he had anticipated, and it was four days before he returned to Beranger Court. His mind felt refreshed and the brief change of scenery had helped him see things more clearly. He alighted from the carriage that had been sent to the station to collect him, and immediately noticed Flora standing at the edge of the lake, looking out across its rippling water to the low hills in the distance. She was alone and appeared preoccupied. Romulus soon noticed her too, and barked a greeting as he loped off towards her.

  Luke had decided to maintain the boundaries between them in future. It seemed like the best, the only thing that he could do. He had not lost sight of his father’s insistence that he marry a woman from his own class and of impeccable character. He was more acutely aware of his grandmother’s need for Flora, and how much her health and disposition had improved since Flora had been engaged to act as her companion. Luke was not about to upset that particular applecart. Besides, Flora had just come into money of her own and was now a woman of independent means. Perhaps she had her own plans for her future.

  Sighing, Luke gave a wry little smile as he tromped off after his dog, accepting that his resolve had not survived long enough for him even to enter his house.

  ‘Oh, Luke, hello.’ She looked up at him through distracted eyes. ‘I did not realise you were back.’ She bent to greet Romulus.

  ‘I apologise if we are interrupting your solitary reverie, but Rom saw you and there was no stopping him, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You are not interrupting. In fact, I’m glad you are here.’ She looked directly at him, her hair windswept. He noticed how pale and preoccupied she appeared. ‘I have discovered what it was that my father didn’t want me or anyone else to know.’

  ‘I can see you are very distressed.’ He took her elbow in a firm hold. ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No, but I do want to tell you what it is. In fact, it would be better if we went back to the house and you read it for yourself.’

  ‘Whatever you prefer.’

  A short time later, Flora joined him in his library and silently handed him a sheaf of papers. She sat beside the fire, staring at the flames, while he absorbed their contents.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, when he finished. He sat beside her and took her hand in his. ‘Little wonder that you are so distressed. What shall you do?’

  ‘Confront him, of course.’

  ‘Do you think that’s sensible?’

  ‘Absolutely! You will never be comfortable when he continues to have the power to start rumours about your family’s honour. Besides, I cannot abide hypocrisy. But I wanted to discuss the matter with you before I go to him.’

  ‘When did you uncover this information?’

  ‘Just last night. I began to think there was nothing to find, then discovered these papers tucked inside the cover of my grandmother’s herbal remedies book.’ She smiled a wan smile. ‘I should have thought to look there immediately.’

  She went on to explain about the missing section from the diary that covered the period of her grandfather’s death.

  ‘I was too slow.’

  ‘You were emotionally overwrought, but you found what you were supposed to when you were ready to deal with it.’

  She shrugged a slender shoulder. ‘Perhaps. But it would have been easier if Grandmamma had entrusted this potentially explosive document to Mr Farthingale’s care, for my attention.’

  ‘She couldn’t risk her attorney or a nosy clerk reading it, I suppose.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘She knew you would find it in your own time, and you did.’

  ‘And it has left me with quite a conundrum.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I shall go to Salisbury tomorrow and have the matter out with my father.’

  ‘I shall come with you.’

  She smiled. ‘Thank you, but no. I must do this alone. It is beyond time that I cleared the air between us and made my situation plain once and for all.’

  ‘There must be something I can do.’

  ‘There is.’ She passed the documents back to him. ‘Keep these safe for me. I shall not take them with me. I don’t suppose my father will resort to physical force to try and take them from me, but he is unpredictable, so I am not taking any chances. Oh,’ she added with a whimsical smile, ‘and if I do not return on the evening train, you have my permission to come and rescue me.’

  He treated her to a soft smile. ‘As if you needed to ask.’

  *

&
nbsp; Flora slept better than she had anticipated, given the task that she had set for herself. She could have written to her father outlining what she knew, and that would have been enough to keep him in line. But she was no longer a child, no longer petrified of his volatile temper, and needed the satisfaction of confronting him.

  She was driven to the station early the next morning by Luke’s coachman and reversed the journey that she had made six months previously as a nervous yet determined rebel. She hardly recognised the person she had turned into during the short intervening period. It was the person she was supposed to be, accounting for her inability to settle into the life of a docile and obedient clergyman’s daughter.

  Her train deposited her in Salisbury in the middle of the morning. She walked the short distance to Cathedral Close with her head held high. One or two familiar faces glanced her way but didn’t greet her. Presumably the improvement in her clothing and her confident demeanour made them doubt their own eyes. Just as well. She had no desire to be diverted from her purpose. She was not nervous, precisely. More resolved, and in no mood to idle her precious time away with mindless gossip.

  She approached the house she had hoped never to see again. Large by most people’s standards, to Flora it looked smaller than she recalled, perhaps because she had become accustomed to more space and greater opulence. She didn’t knock, but turned the handle and walked straight in. The one servant her father employed was overworked and did not come to investigate. She heard the piano being badly played by one of her sisters and the voices of them all, led by her mother, rising up in a hymn. Flora didn’t pause, but made her way straight to her father’s library. It was his custom to work there alone every morning, and he disliked interruptions. His gruff voice barked out an impatient order to enter when she tapped at the door.

  ‘What is it, my dear? I especially told you that this…’ He glanced up, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. ‘Flora.’ He half rose from his chair. ‘You are come home.’ But he looked wary, presumably because her expression was carved in stone and he sensed she had not come to stay.

  ‘Not for long, Father.’ She closed the door behind her and calmly took a seat in front of the fire. She had seldom entered this room during her childhood, unless it was to be chastised for her latest wrong-doing, and she was never invited to sit. This time she did not wait to be invited. ‘I have read Grandmamma’s diaries,’ she said without preamble.

  The colour drained from his face as he plopped down in the chair across from hers. ‘I had not realised that Farthingale had already passed your bequest on.’

  ‘I asked him to when you became so insistent upon my returning here and threatened to make trouble for the earl and his family. They have been kind and generous, treating me as one of their own, and I will not permit you to sully their reputation.’

  ‘You will not?’ His chest swelled and he looked on the point of delivering a set-down, seeming to forget that he no longer held the upper hand in their relationship.

  ‘Your thuggish threats are not what brought me here.’ She fixed him with a look of steely resolve. ‘I know you killed your own father.’

  Papa’s cheeks bulged and flushed a deep shade of red. ‘That is ridiculous! As always, my mother exaggerated.’

  ‘You did not quarrel about a séance he held, to which a member of the senior clergy had inveigled an invitation? The man was a critic of yours and could stall your career’s progression because you had given him your assurance that your father no longer practised spiritualism?’

  Her father didn’t respond immediately, and Flora knew he would be thinking hard about how to defend his position. He would also resent having to explain himself to a disobedient daughter. But Flora held all the aces and he had no choice.

  ‘I was angry when I heard what had happened, I won’t deny it. I confronted my father and reminded him of his promise, but he denied making it.’

  ‘Perhaps because he did not. Grandmamma says that you argued the point. Grandpapa had agreed to exercise discretion, but he never ever said that he would give up trying to help people.’

  ‘Help?’ Papa threw up his hands, still struggling to contain his temper. ‘All that mumbo-jumbo was no help to anyone. Telling people what they wanted to hear about an afterlife, indeed.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you do every Sunday?’

  ‘I will not tolerate blasphemy in this house, Flora.’

  ‘You are no longer in any position to give me orders.’ Flora adjusted the fall of her skirts. ‘Tell me what happened between you and Grandpapa. I can easily imagine that you were furious. I have been on the receiving end of your fury often enough to know that you possess a quick and violent temper and that you are not always reasonable.’ She glanced at his desk and shuddered, recalling the numerous occasions when she had been forced to bend over it whilst he applied a birch with considerable force to the backs of her bare thighs in punishment for some mild transgression of his rules. Given the frequency with which such punishments had been administered, Flora suspected that he had taken some sort of deviant pleasure from delivering them. ‘You confronted him, naturally.’

  ‘I did, and matters became heated.’ Papa puffed out his chest, righteously outraged. ‘He refused to listen to reason and tried to push past me and leave the room. I pushed him back, unwilling to let him go until we resolved the matter once and for all. He stumbled over a fold in the rug, fell and hit his head on the mantle.’ Papa shook his head. ‘It was an accident. There was nothing anyone could have done to save him. He had a weak heart and was dead the moment he hit the floor.’

  ‘How convenient for you.’ Flora sent him a sceptical look. ‘No wonder Grandmamma said she was your conscience. She kept quiet about what she knew in return for not being committed to a lunatic asylum, when in fact she was as sane as you or me.’ She made no attempt to keep the contempt out of her voice. ‘You must be so very proud.’

  ‘It was not my finest hour, I’ll be the first to admit that, and the circumstances have haunted me ever since. However, I prayed for guidance and the good Lord saw fit to call me to his service.’

  Flora rolled her eyes. ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘What are you doing to do?’ he asked.

  Flora should have felt some satisfaction at having her father beholden to her for the first time in her life. Their roles had been effectively reversed. Instead, she felt an overwhelming sadness for the lost little boy who had just wanted to be accepted by his peers and had turned his obsessive nature into a religious quest when that had not happened.

  ‘Tell me how you came to hear the rumours about Lord Swindon’s father’s gambling debt.’

  She thought at first that he wouldn’t answer her but, of course, he had no choice.

  ‘Captain Redfern came to see me one day, out of the blue. A war hero, injured during battle in Afghanistan.’

  ‘Go on.’ Flora allowed that particular misconception go unchallenged.

  ‘He said that he was convalescing with his sister, a Mrs Arnold, who lives close to Beranger Hall. He heard that you were employed there, and had become greatly valued—’

  ‘Heard how?’

  Her father looked disinterested. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘If it did not, I should not ask. This conversation is as unpleasant for me as it is for you, Father. Just answer my question, if you please.’

  ‘I’m not precisely sure. Mrs Arnold, I think, had seen you once or twice in the village with the countess, and with the earl, too.’

  Flora nodded. She recalled an occasion when a sudden downpour caught them unawares. Luke and Sam happened to be in the village. Sam took the countess to cover but Luke was in a capricious mood. When Flora fretted about getting the hem of her new gown wet, he swept her into his arms and carried her over the puddles. Everyone else had run for shelter and she thought the gesture had gone unobserved. But her perceptions told her that it had not. Lucy Arnold had seen them, and now that moment of madness had come back to plague th
em, all because Flora didn’t want to ruin her gown.

  Perhaps Papa was in the right of it and vanity was a sin. But the vanity had been hers, so she was unsure why it was Luke who was in danger of paying a heavy price for it. His gallantry had been enough to drive a jealous woman on a crusade to get rid of her by whatever means possible. Or had she simply been planning her revenge, in case her campaign to attract Luke didn’t bear fruit? It was hard to know.

  ‘I see.’ Flora gathered up her stocking purse and stood. ‘I shall keep my grandmother’s papers somewhere safe. They will not see the light of day and would not have done so anyway, even if I had remained at home, if not for your sake then for that of my mother and sisters. You had no cause to go to such extreme lengths. However, if one word of the rumours regarding the earl’s father gets into the public domain then I will behave as vindictively as you appear capable of doing. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Flora, my dear, there is no need for such animosity.’

  ‘I beg to differ, Father.’ She glanced at the desk again. ‘Are we in agreement?’

  ‘We are. I never would have started those rumours and should not have threatened you. I’m truly sorry.’

  Flora blinked. She’d never heard her father apologise for anything. He always assumed that he was in the right, even though most of the time he was not.

  ‘Then we understand one another. Good day to you. We shall not meet again. My best wishes to Mama and girls. I shall not disturb their music practise by intruding upon it.’

  *

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’ Paul put his head around the door to Mary’s sitting room.

  Mary looked up and smiled. ‘Not in the least. I was just perfecting the sketch of the heron. I swear I have taken that bird in extreme dislike. It is most inconsiderable of him to have such an awkward body shape.’

  Paul laughed, looked over her shoulder and nodded his approval. ‘It is greatly improved by the reshaping of his beak. We cannot all be examples of physical perfection, although that is probably precisely how he seems to other herons.’