Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

  ******************

  "Never fear, Jeremy," Lady Waynflete said with some contentment the following morning. "Nicholas has some discretion: he has spirited the doxy out of town and I don't expect we will see her again until next spring —if ever."

  Jeremy paced the floor indignantly. "You know what this means."

  "It means nothing, my boy, since Nicholas had the sense to tie her up in marriage before the scandal could rub off on me. So there is no use repining. He said he would protect me, and he did."

  "And at an unimaginable cost," Jeremy muttered. "It defies everything."

  “The girl is resourceful and clever. She got what she came to get, Jeremy, and she fooled all of us into the bargain, Nicholas most of all. Well, it will be last year's news as of tomorrow: your friends will find some other gabble-babble to blow out of all proportion in order to entertain themselves,"

  Blexter scratched at the door. "Mr. Carradine, Madame."

  Lady Waynflete jumped up and immediately reached for her hair with one hand, and to smooth her dress with the other. "Why did he not send a note? How do I look, Jeremy? The man will never—Dunstan, my dear. Good morning, come sit. How delightful of you to call."

  "A minute's stayover only, Lucretia. Don't bother with the amenities for me. Tell me, do you know where Nick has got to?"

  "Certainly: he has gone down to Southam."

  "To Southam? Are you sure? Not Timberlake? The boy hasn't

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  been to Southam in years; in fact, I don't think he's used Timberlake either in all that time, but surely he would be more likely to go to—Southam, you say? Well —I suppose he did the right thing. After that last item—indecent, that woman, barging into Lady Badlington's and walking off with all that money, and then, in public, she hung Annesley out to dry—" He shook his head. "Shameless, that woman. How Nick ever got caught in her toils I will never know. Southam . . ."

  "Well, I know," Lady Waynflete said comfortably. "Do you remember how we said for years he ought to . . . but he never did. You went down once, I remember—in aught two or three—and you said the place looked like a ruin. How do you suppose he means to keep her there if everything isn't up to the nines?"

  Dunstan didn't move a muscle. "I was there? Was I? Back then? Such a memory, Lucretia—" Too extensive, he thought, too obsessive. "Well—I must have told Nicholas what was to do and he made repairs. He must have. I just would have thought the memories . . ."

  "But his mother and father have been gone this age. That cannot signify, all those old feelings. He's gone past them, surely."

  "Nick was ever close one. Who would have thought he would spring a marriage on us?"

  "Well, the betting goes that it is all a hum," Jeremy said. "It's gone down hundreds of pounds he'll get rid of her now. You wouldn't believe the book at White's."

  "I might take a flyer on that one myself," Dunstan said. "In any event, dear Lucretia, you must excuse me. Nick absconding is one thing, but Nick at Southam is very hard to conceive."

  He turned at the door. "Does one know whether Nick will return to town to fuifill several engagements he has at hand?"

  "Indeed," Lady Waynflete confirmed. "He will return for the next month at least. He did say he especially wanted to go to— Dunstan! Where are you going? That man! He can never be held in any one place for any length of time."

  It was his besetting sin, she thought, because otherwise he would know that every time he walked through her door, he had come home.

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  * * *

  She saw Southam for the first time through a parade of trees down a long winding driveway, awash in sunlight that surrounded it like a halo.

  Here was Southam, the manor where Nicholas had been raised and come to manhood, which stood as testament of time and the strength and will of the Carradine forebears.

  He felt it himself, the sense of history with which he was connected and which he had resisted for all the days of his life. He could have reached out and embraced it, and he had chosen instead to retreat and withdraw and fight a useless fight he never had won.

  It stood, battered and stately, three stories tall and four square, towered on equal sides of the third story, and waiting, always waiting until its master chose to return home.

  The elegant entrance was as inviting as ever, a double staircase leading up to the pedimented door inside of which was . . . home.

  A house, he thought, as Mr. Fogg urged the horses onward and the carriage moved forward, was a place of patience: it sheltered and enfolded and eventually it let you go. It held no grudges, it stood its ground, and it welcomed you whenever you chose to return. It was eternal, it always remained.

  It was huge. Jainee could not encompass the whole of it as the carriage slowly approached the gravel oval in front of the house where it would pull in and stop. It was breathtaking. She felt as though the house might swallow her whole, that she could get lost in it and never be found for days.

  The carriage lurched to a stop. Mr. Fogg jumped down and immediately set out the step to facilitate Nicholas' descent.

  He stood, arms akimbo, in front of the door he had entered a hundred times in his youth, and the one he had slammed in finality some ten years ago, after his parents died and long after he had taken up residence elsewhere.

  He felt like a boy again, without the same frantic pain engulfing him in resentment.

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  Jainee stepped down beside him, pulling her cashmere shawl more tightly around her as if it could protect her from something unseen.

  The door opened and a man stepped out who was as stately as his surroundings. "My lord?" His question was uncertain, his voice as rich as the color of the bricks on the house.

  "Exeter." Nicholas tucked Jainee's hand into his arm and led her up the long flight of stairs. "This is my wife. Jainee, this is Exeter, who has been running the house since my departure and my parents' death. He will see to all your needs. All is in readiness, I take it?"

  "Indeed, sir. The apartments on the first floor are thoroughly prepared for your use, and several rooms above have been allocated to Madame's maid and whichever of your staff will be staying over."

  "Excellent. Come, Jainee. Come into my home."

  The words reverberated: my home—and the house had grown smaller since he had run. Surely the hall was overpowering when he was a boy, and the rear salon totally intimidating. The library, stacked to the ceiling with unread books now crumbling from disuse, had been a chamber of horror for him who had not been bookish. And the reception room, which encompassed the entire right wing of the house, had been a place he had not been permitted to enter.

  The house had diminished with his memories. He felt nothing discordant now—only a calm, clear sense of place.

  Their rooms were located in the wing opposite the reception room, accessible through a transverse hallway which ran the width of the house.

  These had been his parents' rooms, and he had been given the bedrooms directly above. He had felt lonely, banished, isolated, he had never reveled in the monstrous amount of room and freedom that they had given a little boy.

  It would be different with his sons, he thought. He would keep them close; he would move heaven and earth to contain them.

  His sons . . .

  "Mr. Nick!" A voice from the doorway, delighted, cheery, old.

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  "Mrs. Blue."

  "And you remember me. Ah, my boy, so good to see how well you've turned about. Your mother would be proud," Mrs. Blue said, bustling into the bedroom without an invitation and taking one item and then another and setting it just where she thought it should be.

  More words, echoing across a lifetime . . . Mother, mother-pretty lady would be proud . . .

  He should not have come. He felt the past grip his entrails and twist them tightly with guilt and remorse and the knowledge he could never undo the sorrow he had caused her. . . . Mother . . .

  "Ah, me, and your beautiful bride—we will
be the best of friends for the weeks you go away; never you fear, Mr. Nicholas. We will find much to do, much to talk about. She will never miss you, but you will pine for her, I can see that you will. You have started already. Come, a luncheon has been made ready in the dining room, just where it always was, overlooking the drive. Didn't your father Jove to sit in of a morning, reading the paper and waiting for callers? Those were the days . . . those were the days."

  Those were the days, long ago and gone, irretrievable, irreplaceable, carved like a marker post into his heart.

  ******************

  They explored the place the rest of the day; she was particularly taken with the long elegant reception room and its pairs of corinthian columns framing each of two entrances, from the hallway and the drawing room. The ceiling was frescoed with streams and wreaths of flowers picked out in gold and a faceted glass chandelier hung suspended from a rosette in the middle of the room. On the wall, directly under, was a fireplace, and opposite, on either side of the floor to ceiling windows, were thick tufted sofas. There were Aubusson rugs scattered along the floor and chairs everywhere to insure seating for everyone.

  Beyond this room was the much less formal drawing room, and across the hallway the dining room. The rear salon had been given over to family entertaining and it was hung with enormous

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  gilt-framed portraits and scenes of everyday life and furnished in a more informal manner.

  The library, down the hallway and adjacent to their rooms, contained bookshelves built into every wall, floor to molded ceiling, a scattering of comfortable chairs and a sofa by the fireplace, and a fitted rug to give it a more cozy aspect.

  The kitchens and work and storage rooms were in the basement, and the stables and barns were a quarter of a mile beyond the house, out of sight of any of the rooms but the upstairs.

  It was a smaller house than Jainee had imagined from the outside, yet it was large enough to be intimidating to her; she had been used to the neat two-story house of her mother which had had three rooms on each floor, nicely arranged for convenience and comfort, and no more than a soul needed, surely.

  She had hardly said a word to Nicholas on the plan of his leaving and they went to bed soberly and quietly, almost as if the ghosts of his past could not let them find each other in the dark. In the morning he was gone, everything left unspoken, thick as the air with emotion and ties unbroken.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "Ah, there is so much to do," Mrs. Blue assured Jainee as she wandered back into the house looking forlorn and lost. "Listen here: we will want to tend to the gardens and do some riding and driving about. You can spend your mornings writing letters and leave the care of the house to me. And that great big library with all those books just begging to be read —ah, cheer up, my lady. He will be back, sooner than you think."

  But she didn't know what to think. Here, so far away from London, where the sky was an unearthly shade of blue, she felt so close to heaven she could have touched it, and that all earthly concerns had no reality in the world of Southam Manor.

  It was enough to just spend a morning walking about, down faintly laid out tracks and then suddenly come upon some whimsy, something unexpected: a pool, a folly, now in ruins. A birdbath. A little garden still growing wild in the wind.

  This had been the sum and substance of Nicholas' life in the years when Dunstan Carradine had been the devoted chevalier of her mother and called himself Charles Daiton. No wonder Therese had discarded his name and retained her own. Had she known of his perfidy even then?

  But there were no shadows surrounding the manor house. There was only clarity and the first days limned by her sense of a first step taken and something irrevocably bound.

  ******************

  The accidents began to occur in short order, one right after the other, and nothing suspicious —not at first.

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  There was the dish of macaroni pudding that made her sick to her stomach. And a fall she took down the outside steps because she tripped on an untied lace. There was the buggy ride she took one morning, her hands confidently guiding an old mare that was easy as a baby, so said Mr. Finley, who cared for the horses. Even he could not understand why the old girl just upped and whacked away like that, toppling the cart and leaving Jainee shaken and not a little afraid to step foot into one again.

  A pile of books fell on her head while she was browsing in the library —an accident, surely, and she did slip and fall on a sliver of soap that had been left by the washstand floor—pure carelessness on her part, no other explanation.

  A glass broke in her hand at dinner one evening, but she must have been clutching it too tightly; blood smeared her palm and stained the pristine white table cloth.

  Mr. Fogg, who had stayed on at Nicholas' instructions, drove her to Hungerford, the nearest town, and she was nearly run over.

  Another time, a crowd surged against her, pushing her into the oncoming traffic.

  Accidents all, spread over the space of a week and a half, some her fault, she was certain; she was clumsy in her new surroundings, and the burden of wearing the name Lady Southam wore on her mightily.

  She was alone; she did not know who among the servants who had lived on the place was her ally except for Marie, who hovered close to her now and watched her every move.

  Mrs. Blue dismissed it as coincidence. "But send a note to my lord, if you feel you must. Fogg will take it, or Finley or one of the grooms."

  But how could she even explain it to Southam when every retelling brought the accidents into the perspective of them possibly being her fault; either she had not looked, or she had not tied or she had dropped the soap or pressed the glass too hard because for some reason she was edgy dining alone.

  She pricked her finger arranging flowers; a stand full of ink spilled all over her papers, her desk, her clothing.

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  She fell out of bed.

  She felt evil swirling all around her. She didn't know who, if anyone, was her friend.

  ******************

  The portraits in the salon intrigued her and one afternoon she persuaded Mrs. Blue to sit with her there and talk about the two who had been Nicholas' parents.

  "Well, there he is —Lord Henry, he was, and there she is —lady Eliza . . . such a wonderful woman, she was. Mr. Nicholas . . . well, he broke her heart and he raised it up to heaven, he did. He came tumbling down this very chimney one day, did you not know the story, my lady? And they was so yearning for a child for themselves, they bought him away from that slug who had made him a slavey, and they raised him like their own. And poor Mr. Nicholas, crying for his mother; he was all of four or five and he didn't know. But he never stopped wanting her, even when Lady Eliza held him in her arms and tried to comfort him. The boy was so unhappy; they never could find who was his mother and how he ended up in the hands of that scurrilous Mr. Slote. They did everything for him, and it seemed like he mourned his lady mother forever. How beautiful she was, my lady, do you see?"

  She saw: such fine eyes, filled with humor and a sad wisdom that must have come from so futilely loving the child she had wanted so much. She knew nothing of Nicholas' life at all, barring that he had not been the natural son of his parents. She felt a pain in her heart for the child who had gotten lost. She wondered about childhoods and parents and whether anyone could grow up pure and untouched in a world that was so sullied.

  She, who had a father who had come and gone like the seasons, and a mother who needed a mother herself, and Nicholas, in the throes of yearning forever for the mother who had abandoned him.

  And somehow, they had found each other and her father had come to life as his uncle.

  The Fates were surely laughing.

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  "He got away from here as soon as he could," Mrs. Blue went on. "He was going to search for her, he said. He said, he thought she was a great lady because she had had all the fine things that great ladies had, and if he were invited
to enough places and met enough people, he was sure he would find her . . ."

  "He never found her," Jainee said, because she knew the end of that story. His cynicism, his need for control, his reputation for utter callousness, these were the tools of a man seeking to immure himself in a hell of his own making.

  "No, my lady. And he abandoned Southam Manor much as she had abandoned him, and we soon fell to wrack and ruin. He heeded no one's pleas to save us until Mr. Dunstan, Lord Henry's brother that is, came for a visit and saw the whole, and he was as shocked as can be that Mr. Nicholas would destroy his legacy this way. And that's when he took a hand —but he never came until this day."

  "I have met Mr. Dunstan Carradine," Jainee murmured, thinking furiously. Something struck her about the fact that Dunstan had come back to Southam Manor when the house was untenanted and falling into disrepair. "It must have been so long ago that the house had deteriorated the way you say; it is so beautiful now."

  "Oh yes, many years ago —eight or nine at least. Of course, Mr. Dunstan was never a frequent visitor to begin with. He was always off somewhere doing something for the government, and I know Lord Henry could never quite figure out what. And after my Lord and Lady died, you never saw him for dust either. But then he came —he had come from someplace where the Manor was closeby and he thought he might take a look. I remember the day because when I showed him around, he was properly shocked at the state things had got to."

  Jainee's heart was pounding like a drum. The boy was safe, he had said. The boy was safe . . . and he had come to Southam Manor about the time he had abducted the boy: the peace had been on then, short-lived, but long enough for plots and plans and uncommon visits to places he never originally frequented. And Nicholas had been gone by then . . .

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  What did it mean?

  "Tell me about Lady Eliza?" she said, to cover her confusion and the frisson of horror that swept over her as her mind leapt from connection to connection with no logic, no proof whatsoever.