stood at the study door, his elderly face solemn and lugubrious.
Poor Dobson—he’d found the marriage difficult enough. Not that Dobson disliked Beth, he simply disliked the unconventional.
Beth entered immediately. Naturally, she had not remained in the parlour, as instructed. She never had been good with directions. He watched her approach and knew both a confused desire as well as a reluctance to see her. Even after years spent amidst London’s most glamorous women, he found her beauty arresting. She was not stunning, exactly. Her clothes were elegant, but in no way ostentatious or even fashionable. Yet there was something about her—she had a delicacy of feature, a luminosity which made her oddly not of this world, as though she were a fairy creature from a magic realm—
‘Ren!’ Beth interrupted his thoughts in that blunt way of hers. She approached, counting her steps to his desk, and now stood before him. With a thud, she put down the large wicker basket. ‘You must see these!’
He dismissed Dobson and watched as Beth opened the carrier.
Then his breath caught. A stabbing pain shot just below his ribcage. His hands tightened into balled fists as she pulled out the rolled canvasses, laying them flat on the mahogany desktop.
‘Where did you find those?’ He forcibly pushed out the words, his throat so tight he feared he’d choke.
He stared at the images: the barn, its grey planks splitting with age, his old horse, the mosaic of autumnal colours, orange leaves and grass yellowed into straw from summer heat.
They were childishly executed, but with such care...such love.
For a moment, he felt that eager enthusiasm to paint. It was a tingling within his fingers, a salivation, a need, an all-consuming drive to create and capture beauty, if only for a moment.
‘Why did you bring these here?’ he asked in a staccato rhythm.
He felt his face twist into bitter lines—not that Beth could see them. It should have made him feel less vulnerable, that she could not discern his expression, but oddly it did not. He’d always felt as though Beth saw more, as though she was better able to discern human frailty, despite her lack of sight.
‘To remind you.’
‘I do not need reminding.’
He ran his fingers across the dry dustiness of the paint. It had been late August. The weather had been hot, a perfect weekend of cloudless skies and air still redolent with summer scent as though fate had conspired to give him that one, final, beautiful weekend.
‘I wanted you to remember how you felt,’ Beth said.
Of course he remembered! How could he forget? He’d felt as though, within a single instant, everything he had known, everything he had loved, everything he had believed had been erased, disappearing within a yawning hole, a cess pit.
The pain, the darkness—worse—the hopelessness had grown, twisting through him, debilitating even now. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight as a child might to block out nightmares. He pushed the canvasses away. They fell to the floor, taking with them the brass paperweight and a candle stick, the crash huge.
‘Ren?’
‘Take them!’
‘But why? You loved to paint. You loved this land.’
‘You need to go.’ He forced himself to keep his voice low and his hands tight to his sides because he wanted to punch the wall and hurl objects against windows in a mad chaos of destruction.
‘Nonsense! I’m not going anywhere until I understand the reason behind your decision. There is a reason. Jamie said so.’
‘Jamie? Jamie?’ Did even Jamie know his secret—a man who seldom spoke except about seedlings? ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He went silent. But I need to know, to understand. I thought these would remind you. I thought you might enjoy them.’
‘You were wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘I—’ Words usually came so glibly, fluidly. Now they stuck in his throat. ‘You need to go,’ he repeated.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am angry and I do not want to frighten you.’
The woman laughed—not harsh laughter, but gentle. ‘Ren, you could never frighten me. You could not frighten me in a million years.’
Of course not! He might frighten grown men in duels. He might race his horse so fast that his groom paled or punch so hard his knuckles bled, but this tiny woman laughed in the face of his rage.
‘Perhaps I should explain to you what my lifestyle has become. Even the fringes of polite society avoid me.’
‘Which is too bad as you can be excellent company. However, I do not frighten easily. Jamie used to have some terrible tantrums,’ she added.
And now he was being likened to an angry child. It made him want to laugh.
‘Right.’ He stepped around to the front of the desk, bending to scoop up the fallen canvasses, candlestick and paperweight with businesslike swiftness. ‘You are right. I could never hurt or even frighten you. And really it doesn’t matter whether you stay or go because I could stare at these childish chicken scratches for ever and my decision would remain unchanged.’
‘But why? I want to know. Doesn’t even a wife in name only deserve that much?’
Her tone seemed laced with distaste and derision as she said the words ‘name only.’ My God, he could have made her more than a wife in name only. He could have dragged her to London or to the marriage bed if he hadn’t respected her so damned much, if he hadn’t known about her aversion to marriage and her need for independence.
‘And why Ayrebourne?’ she persisted.
‘Graham Hill is his birthright.’ He ground out the words between clenched jaws.
She shook her head. ‘What utter tosh. It is your birthright.’
‘Not so much.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Likely because it is none of your business.’
Two bright crimson spots highlighted her cheeks and her breathing quickened. They stood quite close now, in front of his huge oak desk. She shifted so that she was square to him, her hands tightened into fists, her chin out-thrust.
‘That is where you are wrong. You can marry me and then ignore me, but this is my business. I have been here. While you were in London, I was here. I helped Edmund after Mirabelle’s death. I organised village events, teas and fairs. I cooed over babies I could not see. I advised on how best to treat a bee sting and a—a boil which was on a place I cannot mention. Mirabelle was dead. Edmund was mourning. Jamie was Jamie. Your mother never came. You never came. I made this estate my business. I made the people my business. I helped Jensen run the place. I kept things going. I am sorry Edmund is dead, but if you are going to absolve yourself of this responsibility, I deserve to know why. You are Lord Graham’s second son. You are the heir.’
Out of breath, she fell silent. After the flow of words, the stillness felt intense. He heard a clock chime from the library and a gardener or stable hand shout something outside.
‘Actually, I’m not,’ he said.
‘Not what?’
‘Lord Graham’s son—second or otherwise.’
‘Lord Graham was not my father.’
‘That is not possible.’ Her face blanched, the hectic red of anger