Martha flew at him, her white nightgown whirling around her ankles. She jumped on him, took him to the floor, a tangle of black and white. She grabbed fistfuls of his hair and began banging his head against the tiles. “You wretched water-piddled trout-brain! Like every other man in the universe, all you can think about is this yelling business. Of course she yells, you cracked pot, she should yell. Do you think the master has no skill at all? You think he’s a clod of a lover? You think he shouldn’t yell as well? You think my mistress is a clod? Never mind that, men don’t need to have skill applied to them to make them yell. Have you no working mental parts at all? No feelings in your heart?” Bang, bang, bang. Petrie groaned.
Jason said as he lifted her off Petrie, “No, Martha, don’t kill poor Petrie. This thing about men’s hearts, I fear in many it’s lower, much lower.” He realized in that instant that Petrie was staring up at Martha, a very strange look on his face, almost as if he were in very bad pain, which he should be.
“Master Jason, you may drop her back down on me, if you wish, sir. I don’t mind, the pain in my cracked head is nothing. Her breath is very sweet, it has quite left me wondering what has happened. I am adrift, waiting for enlightenment.”
Martha shrieked, tried to kick him.
Hallie said, “Martha, thank you for standing up for me. Now, both you and Petrie take yourselves back to bed.” She paused a moment, staring down at Petrie, who hadn’t moved and who looked both baffled and appalled, his dark hair standing in clumps on his head where Martha’s strong fingers had nearly pulled them out. “You will go back to your own bed, Petrie. You will think of no other bed except yours. You will not think of Martha’s sweet breath. All is well. We are no longer arguing. Master Jason simply wanted some brandy. Perhaps you know. Can one heat brandy?”
Petrie said, “Well, back in 1769, it’s said that old Lord Brandon was suffering from an ague. His valet, an ancestor of mine, heated him a snifter of brandy over a small hob in the fireplace. It was told me by my mother that the heated brandy made him well within a half hour.”
“I’m going to sleep with Henry in the stable,” Jason said, and marched toward the front door.
“You won’t be happy walking out there barefooted,” Hallie called after him. “Petrie, why don’t you fetch your master’s boots, put on your own as well, and the two of you can snuggle down together in the warm straw on either side of poor Henry.” Hallie smiled at both of them impartially, and walked toward the kitchen. “Jason? In case your mood changes, I will take a very close look at the kitchen table.”
Jason was dressed and on Dodger’s bare back within ten minutes.
CHAPTER 39
Corrie rubbed the cramp in her leg. She never should have let James arrange her in such a position, ah, but it had been such fun. She rubbed some more. She’d swear she had never used that particular muscle in her life. Perhaps she should rub in some of her mother-in-law’s special warming cream that seeped to your bones.
She heard something. She froze, cramp forgotten, instantly as still as James, who was lying on his back, breathing deeply in sleep, nearly dead, he’d told her before falling on his back, an angel’s smile on his face.
She heard it again. A noise coming from the window. Good heavens, this was the second time. When Corrie crept toward the window, a poker in her hand, she saw it start to slowly inch upward.
She watched her brother-in-law ease the window up far enough so he could swing his leg over the sill and climb in.
“I was hoping for a villain this time,” she said, and gave him a hand. “I was armed and ready.”
“Thank you for putting down the poker, Corrie. I’m sorry to come in through your window again, I know it’s late.”
“Not that late. I felled poor James. That’s him, snoring from the bed.”
She sounded quite proud of herself. Jason touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I’ll wake up the sluggard. He doesn’t deserve to sleep.”
Jason shook his brother’s shoulder. “Wake up, you pathetic excuse for a man.”
James, as was his wont, opened his eyes without hesitation, and focused instantly and clearly on his brother’s annoyed face above him. “I feel very fine,” he said, and smiled.
“You don’t deserve to, damn you. Get up, my world has ended and you’re lying here, thinking about how wonderful life is. You don’t bloody deserve it.”
James, still light in the head and heart, said, “All that?”
“What’s wrong, Jason? What’s happened?”
Jason looked with a good deal of affection at his sister-in-law, whose white hand clutched his sleeve, her worry for him shining in her eyes, though in the dim light it was hard to know for sure. “You look ever so nice with your hair all wild around your face, Corrie.”
James bolted upright. “Don’t you admire her, you dog. Damn you, you’ve got a wife of your own. Step away from her before I flatten you.”
“What’s wrong, Jason?”
“I’ve left Lyon’s Gate,” Jason said, and stepped back from his sister-in-law because he knew when his brother was serious. He slid down to the floor, leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his bent knees.
James pulled on his dressing gown, eyed his wife’s revealing nightgown, and said, “Get back into bed, Corrie. I don’t want Jason to get any ideas.”
“Ideas? How could he possibly be thinking about me and this lovely peach nightgown when he’s left his home?” Corrie lit some candles, then slipped back into bed, drew a deep breath. “You’ve left Hallie?”
Jason said, not looking up, “The nightgown is lovely, Corrie, but I’m not thinking about you under it. My life is ripped apart. I meant to go sleep in the stables, but I came here instead. I don’t know what to do.”
James patted his wife’s cheek, tucked more covers over her, then pulled his twin to his feet. “Let’s go downstairs and have a brandy. You can tell me what’s happened.”
“Do you know if heated brandy is good, James?”
When the brothers stepped into James’s estate room, it was to see their father pouring each of them a snifter of brandy. He was wearing a dark blue dressing gown whose elbows were worn nearly through. “So,” Douglas said, trying to sound calm, when in fact, his heart was racing, and he was terrified, “why, Jason, did you leave your home in the middle of the night, and your wife of not yet a month?”
James said, “Actually, it’s not all that late, not even midnight yet.”
“Don’t make me shoot you, James,” his father said.
Jason gulped down the brandy and fell to coughing. When he finally caught his breath, his father poured him more. “Slowly this time. Get ahold of yourself. Tell us what’s happened.”
“I don’t think brandy needs to be heated. My belly is on fire. It’s Hallie.”
Both Douglas and James remained silent.
Jason sipped at his brandy. “I’m very sorry to break in on you like this, but I just didn’t know where else to go. Well, like I said, I was going to sleep in the stable, but I was afraid Petrie would come with me.”
Douglas said, “What did Hallie do?”
Jason sipped brandy.
“What did she do?”
“She laughed at me.”
“I don’t understand,” James said slowly. “What did she laugh at you about?”
“She wanted me to tell her what happened five years ago, and so I did. She made light of it! Dammit, all three of us still live with that awful time.”
James said, “The gall. Here I was growing fond of her. I thought she was nice, filled with kindness.”
“She is, usually.”
“No, she’s obviously cruel,” James said, and shook his head. “Hard, that’s what she is, and unfeeling.”
Douglas nodded. “Indeed. I trust you set her straight, Jason. I am very disappointed in her. I believe I will ride to Lyon’s Gate right now, and give her a piece of my mind.”
“I’ll go
with you, Papa,” James said. “I’d like to shake her, tell her she doesn’t understand what really happened, how it smote you to your toes, Jason, how deeply you feel about it, and your part in it.”
“She had the nerve to say that any part I had in it I should have gotten over by now.”
“What a coldhearted creature,” Douglas said. “I’m very sorry you had to marry her, Jason. I’ve wondered if perhaps she took advantage of you because she knew her father was there, knew perhaps he was even on his way into the stable.”
Jason drank more brandy. “No, she didn’t know her father was there. She simply couldn’t help herself.”
“Well, no matter. Yes, I’ll go over right now and set her straight about things. I won’t have her hurting you when you’re so very hurt already.”
“I told her how I was such a fool, how Judith pulled me in so effortlessly, that she’d won. You know what Hallie said? She said Judith didn’t win, how could she when she was dead?”
James said, sipping his brandy, “I’ve never looked at it in exactly that light. Fact is, Jase, she did fool you—fooled the rest of us for that matter, and surely that makes all of us dupes—but I certainly understand how you would feel more like a fool, more like a failure and a loser, than the rest of us. I want to go with you, Father. Hallie needs to be thrashed.”
“More brandy, Jason?”
Jason frowned as he stuck out his snifter to his father. “She didn’t call me a failure or a loser. I tried to explain it to her, but you know Hallie, she’s able to weave in and out of a conversation. She was talking about Judith’s spirit hanging about, about how her spirit must be so pleased that she was still controlling my life. That isn’t true, dammit!”
“Of course it’s not,” Douglas said. “Imagine, a woman dead for five years still controlling someone’s thoughts and actions. It’s absurd.”
“Well, yes, it is. It’s just that I—Oh hell, Father, you could have died. Do you hear me? You could have died! How can I ever forget my role in that?”
“But I didn’t, Jason, you’re the one who could have died.”
“Well I didn’t either, but that’s neither here nor there. Do you know she asked if you’d ever lied to me?”
“I don’t believe I have,” Douglas said. “Hmm. Well, perhaps I did when you were a lad and you wondered why your mother had yelled in the gazebo—”
James would cut his brain out before he’d think about that. He nodded. “Yes, I would lie to Douglas and Everett as well.”
“The point is, you haven’t ever lied to me about anything important, and so I told her. Then she had the cheek to tell me I believed you had lied to me—my own father.”
“Why is that?”
“She said it was obvious I hadn’t believed you when you told me I wasn’t to take the blame, and thus I did believe you’d lied to me.”
“Hmm,” said Douglas. “Fact is, Jason, she’s right. You didn’t believe me. I hate to say it, but Hallie did nail that one.”
“It’s not that I didn’t believe you, Papa, it’s just that you could have so easily died and so could you, James, and it was all my fault, no one else’s. It hit me between the eyes it was so clear. How could I deny something so obvious? You love me, damn you, and that’s why you—well all right, I didn’t accept your words, I couldn’t because I knew you said them because you loved me.”
Douglas said, “Even though I’d like to clout Hallie, let me be honest here. The fact is, Jason, you just admitted it yourself—you didn’t believe me. Perhaps you simply weren’t able to, but you wounded me, Jason, deeply, I’ll admit it.”
“Still,” James said, “she shouldn’t have said such a cruel thing about a son disbelieving his father, a father he admits never lied to him. I hope you set her straight, Jase.”
“Yes, certainly. About what exactly?”
Douglas said, “That’s all right. Don’t tease yourself any more about it. Truth is, I’ve lived every day for the past five years worrying about you. I can still feel the wet of your blood against my palm. There was so much blood, Jason, and it was you who were bleeding—my son, who was a damned hero. I remember exactly how I felt, how all of us felt, when you were so ill, when we listened to your every breath, praying it wouldn’t be your last. That sort of fear is corrosive, it burns into your gut and your heart.” Douglas paused a moment, then said quietly, “You weren’t the only one to suffer, Jason. Corrie killed two people. It’s a tremendous burden she must carry the rest of her life, even though she would never regret what she did. She still has occasional nightmares. We, all of us, live with the past, Jason, you more than any of us. Perhaps it’s time all of us consigned that wretched time to the ether. It’s time we all let it go.”
“I can’t,” Jason said, then paused. “Hallie said once that the only good she ever saw in remembering a painful event was that it might keep you from doing the same stupid thing again. But it’s so much more than that. Damnation—nightmares? I’m very sorry about that. Poor Corrie, in addition to being a fool, I’m selfish. I didn’t consider anyone except myself. Oh hell.”
James said, “I say thank God for the passage of time. It blurs things, and you begin to realize how very lucky we all are, how very blessed. We all survived. We’re here drinking brandy now, aren’t we?”
“But I was to blame, I—”
Douglas said, “Tomorrow I will ride to Lyon’s Gate and inform Hallie she isn’t to treat you so badly again, that she is to comfort you, help you endure your lifelong misery. She is to stop being coldhearted.”
Jason said, “It’s not that she’s coldhearted. It’s that what happened—it’s so damned deep inside me that I’ll never be free of it. I accept that. She must accept it too, she must.”
“I will set her straight,” Douglas said. “Trust me, Jason.”
“No, please, Father, don’t say anything to her. I must go now, I’ve kept you too long as it is.”
“One more thing, Jason,” his father said. Jason slowly turned. “Never forget that I love you, that I’ve loved you since you were in your mother’s womb and I splayed my palm over her belly and felt the two of you trying to kick off my hand. When you came yelling your head off into the world, I believed there could be nothing sweeter in life. However, truth be told, at this moment, Jason, I’d like to kick you across the room.”
Jason nearly fell over. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t?” James shook his head at his brother. “You said you left Lyon’s Gate because Hallie was making fun of you. Do you mean she can’t understand why, after five years, you’re still wanting to drown yourself in guilt?”
“The way you’re saying it doesn’t sound reasonable, James. Surely you must understand that—” He fell silent because he couldn’t find the words to say.
“Yes, we do understand,” his father said. “I think that after what happened five years ago, you desperately wanted to free all of us from your pain. You saw leaving England to be the answer. You thought we’d forget you, perhaps? That when we spoke of your triumphs in Baltimore, we’d not also remember you lying in bed with the physician digging that bloody bullet out of your shoulder, not remember that you nearly died? You are a blockhead, Jason.”
“But I was the one who—”
Douglas said, “It has always amazed me how you so eagerly gave yourself all the credit for bringing about that particular tragedy. You were nothing more than a young man who held honor dear, who loved his family, who faced evil and didn’t recognize it. And why should you? None of us had ever before been thrown into evil such as those three offered up. You ran away, Jason. I wish you had not, it nearly broke your brother, leaving him to deal with a new wife who’d had to kill two people, and every day face a mother and a father who would gladly have given their own lives for yours.
“And you survived, Jason. I believe you’ve survived fairly well. And now you have a wife who, if I’m not mistaken, would also give her life for you. Go home, Jason. Go face yourself
, and the past, and think about your present and future. Both look remarkably fine to me. Oh yes, I got a letter from James Wyndham. He and his family will be here in three weeks and they’re bringing you a thoroughbred you trained yourself for a wedding present.”
“Which one?”
“I believe James Wyndham said his name is Eclipse, after our own very famous Eclipse.”
Jason said absently, “Eclipse never lost a race. He was amazing. Stubbs painted him.”
“Yes,” Douglas said. “All right. James Wyndham said his little girl Alice named him.”
“Yes,” Jason said, “yes, she did.” He walked to his brother and hugged him tightly. Then he stood a moment, looking at his father from a distance of six feet. He felt tears rise in his throat. “Papa, I—”
“Uncle Jason!”
“Uncle Jason!”
Two small boys, their white nightshirts flapping around their ankles, burst into the room, arms raised.
Jason stared down at the two beloved little boys. Life always moved on. Even as he gathered up both of them tightly against him, the tears dried in his eyes and in his heart. “What are you two devils doing awake this late?”
Everett gave him a wet kiss on the neck. Douglas was squeezing his neck so hard he nearly broke it. “We heard Mama arguing with herself.”
Jason nodded. “That would arouse my curiosity as well. Ah, Mother, you’re awake too?”
Alex came over to peel one of the boys off Jason’s shoulder. “I’m here to rescue you. No, Everett, no waltzing tonight. It’s time for the two of you to get back into bed.”
After no more than two minutes of whining, at which point James said, “That is enough. You will both be silent. Kiss your uncle good night. You will see him again soon. I will come up in a moment and tuck you in.”
Douglas shook his head at his wife. “I believe I said the same thing to him and Jason.”
“Very probably. Innumerable times. Are you all right, Jason?”
Jason hugged his mother, stepped back. “Don’t worry about me, Mama. I’m off.” He paused a moment, then said, “I missed all you so very much when I was in Baltimore, please never doubt that.”
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