by JayneFresina
His father did not have boots that old, of course. True Deverell wore very expensive boots made by the finest establishment in London and, whenever he needed a new pair, had them sent post haste to Cornwall. But nobody argued this point with him. Apparently it pleased the "old man" to imagine he still scratched about in faithful boots from his less affluent days, and correcting their father was a sport only for the foolhardy— or for Damon, whenever the sparks ignited by the friction of their very similar personalities became too many and too hot, melting his armor, exposing his nerve-endings to the heat.
The quarrel before he left London to follow Elizabeth north was one example of this abrasive clash of wills between father and son.
"I thought you were the cub with all the brains, but now you let this nonsense distract you."
"You've never met Elizabeth." One could hardly call Elizabeth "nonsense", he mused.
"I've met her type."
"And what might that be?"
To which his father had replied steadily, with no apparent emotion beyond vague surprise that he'd been asked the question, "Self-interested and conniving. She is by no means a rarity or hard to fathom. The world is littered with Elizabeth Stanburys."
"If you know so much about her—"
"A woman discontent in her own marriage turns her eye to you as a plaything to relieve the tedium, and you, rather than simply enjoy the passing pleasure she offers, suddenly decide to complicate matters by becoming involved— of all the bloody stupid things to do."
"She is trapped and unhappy. I can make her—"
"What do you care? The state of her marriage is none of your business, and we are all responsible for our own happiness. The worst thing any man can do is get caught up in other folks' melodrama. If you abandon your position and responsibilities at Stempenham and Pitt to pursue this dangerous woman—a wench who has already run from you once and will do so again— you're a fool boy and far weaker than I thought. If you cannot see that she used you, then you may as well tie yourself to her petticoats, stick a thumb in your insolent mouth and have done with it."
"You never had an affair with a dangerous woman, sir?" he'd snapped sarcastically, knowing the answer to that already.
"I certainly never made a blithering idiot of myself by chasing after one. They came to me or they didn't. It was up to them. I had more important things to do. And so should you."
"What about your first wife, sir? Did you not pursue Lady Charlotte Rothsey when she was engaged to another?" Few folk ever dared raise the subject of his father's first wretched marriage, but Damon did.
"I did not chase that harpy. She pursued me like a bitch in heat. Tricked me into marriage by feigning a pregnancy, I might add. So once again I recommend caution, boy. Learn from my mistakes."
Damon could have pointed out that his father would never have been tricked in that way unless he'd bedded Lady Charlotte Rothsey in the first place— and she surely hadn't held a knife to his throat when he did that. Instead he saved his breath and strode to the door.
"If you go after that woman, you will disappoint me, boy! I wash my hands of you!"
Pausing on his way out, he'd replied, "I thought my choices were mine to make, as long as I take responsibility for the outcome and pay the consequences? Is that not what you always told me? Sorry, sir, but I cannot stay here and do nothing in this matter, when there is a child involved. A child that is my responsibility. I'm a man now, not a boy."
His father's voice followed him down the stairs. "Learn from my missteps! If you must complicate your life with a woman, surely you can find one who doesn't already belong to another man and who actually seeks out your company rather than runs from it. Let her be a woman of whom you can be proud, not one who tramples on your pride. Let her be a woman who makes you strong, not weak. A woman who will bring something good to your future, not merely strife and vexation."
But how was he supposed to give up and not fight for his unborn child? His father had reared a litter of eight children— at least three of whom were illegitimate, Damon included— and would never have relinquished his rights to any one of them for another man to raise.
So he'd spent these last four days in pursuit of Elizabeth. So far he'd found no sign of her. Nobody he came upon had even seen a woman of her description, and nobody recognized the name. But he wouldn't give up. He knew that world into which his son was in danger of being born; knew its cold, dark and dirty side especially, and he couldn't let it happen.
When he first left London in a blind rage, Damon had blamed Ransom for persuading Elizabeth to flee the city— he knew his brother had met with her— but since then he'd had time to cool his temper and reassess the situation. Many, many miles with no company but his own had forced him to consider other potential causes for her flight.
Finally he concluded that Elizabeth left London in haste, not because of anything his brother said— she would never listen to the advice of someone she saw to be her inferior— but because she thought there was no other choice. A woman raised to maintain appearances at all costs, she chose to stay in her apathetic, but dutiful marriage, rather than leave her husband and be thrown onto the rocky seas of scandal. She could not, by law, divorce her husband, of course; only the husband could apply for such an action, but George Stanbury would surely do so at once if she publicly cohabitated with another man.
Although Elizabeth's reputation would be shattered and her fine society friends would abandon her, Damon saw all that as a brittle, meaningless veneer in any case. He could provide for his child. They would be safe with him, so what did any of that matter?
Apparently Elizabeth did not share this view. She did not trust him to look after her.Whatever his father and elder brother suspected, Damon firmly refused to believe that Elizabeth Stanbury had used him as nothing more than a stud horse, to provide her titled husband and his estate with a long-awaited heir. Only Ransom could think him that naive and easily duped by a woman, and only his father could assume a woman's motives so despicable.
To hell with what anybody else thought; the child — his child—was innocent in all this. The only soul that was. He wouldn't abandon his son or daughter to the Stanburys and their world.
As for the mother of that child, she was ten years Damon's senior, beautiful, icy and stand-offish; an expensive luxury item and one of the rare few he allowed himself, for he was prudent with his finances, as he was with his time. But when he met Lady Elizabeth Stanbury he had been feeling more restive and stifled than ever before, needing something upon which to liberate his trapped energies.
Damon had set about her seduction with his typical, single-minded purpose. Yes, he had let her color his cheek with a stinging slap more than a few times, let her call him a "filthy, despicable Deverell bastard" quite often. Because the sex, once she'd assured herself of his unworthiness and her own superiority, was remarkable— rough, raw and exceedingly zealous.
"I might have imagined this tomfoolery from some of the other boys," his father had muttered when he learned about Elizabeth's condition. "But you, Damon, ought to have more sense!"
Back to the subject of his father's expectations, he thought dolefully. Was there ever a heavier mantle laid on any man's shoulders? Sometimes he wished fervently to be the son of whom nothing good was anticipated, or likely— Ransom, for example. What a relief that would be.
Or perhaps not. When Damon left London, his brother was looking decidedly worse for wear, having encountered some thugs in a dark alley. With his usual "I don't know why you bother" attitude, the badly injured man, propped up in his bed, had told Damon it was just the handiwork of somebody who took a disliking to his face. A disadvantage of being a Deverell and a man who didn't care who he offended.
But Damon, having troubles of his own pressing on his immediate attention, had no time to worry about his brother who would, inevitably, bounce back with just a few scars that made him all the more handsome and irresistible to the ladies. Damon had to manage his problem first.
Again, he imagined his father sitting opposite in the carriage and reminding him, "William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at your age. What are you doing with your life, boy? You were meant to do all the things I couldn't, because I lacked the formal education. I lacked the opportunities, but I made sure you had them all. And what do you do? Throw them back in my face to pursue an affair with a married woman. A married woman now carrying a child that may, or may not, be yours."
Damon strongly resented the accusation that he could be duped into accepting responsibility for another man's child. He had no reason to suspect Elizabeth had any other lover. Why would she need more than him? Besides, she could easily have told him the child was somebody else's, but she had not.
Nor, however, had she been particularly grateful for his offer of help.
She had told him of the pregnancy after sending him an urgent message to meet her at the suite she kept at Mivart's Hotel, which is where their trysts had always taken place— all except for the last one, when she had turned up, unexpectedly, at his lodgings. After she gave him the news, Damon had quickly set about putting his thoughts and plans in order, deciding what must be done, what could not be done, and what everything would cost. But she had eyed him with cool bemusement, and then curtly assured him, "I don't expect anything from you. What could you possibly do for me now?"
Startled that she remained so calm, even offhand about her situation, he had replied somberly, "Elizabeth, there is a child to consider."
"Yes. A miracle, I suppose," she said, her tone droll. "After all this time, I thought it was impossible for me."
"I won't abandon you. We'll manage this. Don't be afraid."
"Why would I be afraid? Women bear children all the time. I'll have the best midwife, of course, wet-nurses to take care of it, maids and nannies."
"That's not what I meant, Elizabeth."
"Then what?" She had almost laughed, her eyes gleaming with amusement and something like pity. "What can you possibly mean?"
"Don't fear your husband. I'll deal with him. I can look after—"
"How old are you?" she'd demanded suddenly, frowning just a little, probably conscious, as ever, of the wrinkles she did everything possible to avoid. "I forget sometimes your youth."
"Twenty-five. Soon." It sounded better, somehow, than twenty-four.
She had brushed his chin lightly with her cold, slender fingers and said, "And you think you can give me what I need."
"I have done, have I not?" he'd snapped, nodding his head toward the bedroom door of the suite.
"As if that is everything," was her weary reply, accompanied by another pitying look— one that might have withered a lesser man.
But Damon thought she was being brave, putting on that aristocratic, marble facade, hiding her feelings. He was certain he was the only man who could help her, whatever she thought. The child needed him, even if she assumed that she didn't.
Ransom, swathed in bandages, peering out from beneath swollen eyelids, had said. "Why don't you wait and see? A pregnancy often comes to nothing. There are so many things that might happen. Until the child is carried safely to term and born living—"
"Because he doesn't have the patience to wait and see whether the brat even looks like him," his father yelled. "He can't wait to ruin his bloody life."
Damon resented that remark too. He considered himself one of the most patient, long-suffering men in all England. Probably in the world. Nobody was more patient than him.
When the devil would they get to this blasted inn?
"Might as well walk there on my own two damned feet," he growled at the roof of the carriage.
In reply, more snow spat at the window of his rocking vehicle and another icy draft reached wiry fingers through unseen gaps to scratch and pinch at his face. Huddling deeper into his tall collar did not seem to help much. The wind here was an unstoppable creature that laughed spitefully at any barrier in its way, and then surmounted it with a gleeful wail of victory.
Damon had always considered Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, just a few miles from where he grew up, to be the wildest place he knew; a landscape laden with sinister shadows and treacherous gullies, prone to unpredictable, fast-changing weather. But here, traveling through Yorkshire for the first time in his life, he discovered a form of climate and a terrain even more brutal.
Before it grew dark out, he'd watched the wind-driven snow bare its teeth— like a tormented, blood-thirsty, white tiger— and roar across the bleak, rough edges of the panorama, tearing at any little bit of exposed flesh with pitiless, jagged fangs, and prowling across the rocky hills to lurk in deep drifts that could swallow a man whole. This snow had no wretched "prettiness" about it, none of the peace and tranquility with which that gleaming white cloaked London streets either. Nature here was unrefined, uncivil, and any attempt made to tame it, however determinedly begun, appeared abandoned midway through. Even the occasional cluster of squat stone buildings, scratched, scraped and chiseled into the side of a hill, seemed starkly menacing and unwelcoming, not many generations away from ruin and fit to offer only begrudging shelter against the elements. It was as if any wandering stranger caught out in this storm had only himself to blame and so could expect no warmth or hospitality from the natives.
But Damon neither looked for, nor expected, a welcome. He was, like that fierce, untamable snow, not interested in making friends.
Now an early winter's night had set in and he could no longer observe his surroundings through the carriage window, but that fierce wind still whittled around every crag and corner, warning all creatures not to venture out into the storm. Not if they wanted to keep their sanity.
Tonight Damon didn't particularly care about that. He couldn't really say what was happening in his mind. Usually sure of where he was going, on this occasion he felt lost.
It was no easy thing to turn his back on the man he'd idolized all his life, to step out from that guiding shadow.
Again he heard his father's voice, a scornful sound that would, apparently, follow him wherever he went. "I hope you don't fancy you're in love with her? You don't know what love is. How could you at your age?"
No, he wasn't in love with Elizabeth. But if she imagined passing his child off as the fruit of her husband's loins, she would have a fight on her hands.
Damon Deverell possessed the same territorial nature as the bull shark too. Nobody would ever take what was his and get away with it. Nobody.
Chapter Fourteen
"What in the name o' Beelzebub brought thee owt in this weather, young 'un?" the housekeeper exclaimed, her bulk filling the small, crooked doorway of the vicarage. "Snow's comin', worse than ever and 'ere you be, owt in it. 'Ave thee nowt in thee skull?"
Pip was accustomed to the housekeeper's brusque manner. The old lady had made her feelings about these visits to her master quite plain. "I've come to see Jonathan, of course, Mrs. Trotter. I've come seeking his good advice."
"Bad job for you, but the master en't 'owme." The woman gave a gelatinous sniff and wiped the back of her hand across her round, red nose. "'Appen the master's gone north and won't be back 'til Sunday service. Now be gone back to where you come from and leave 'im be. Nowt but trouble, you are. Don't thee stand there gawpin. Step owt way and let me put wood in 'ole to keep owt the ruddy draft."
The door creaked shut, a stout bolt immediately drawn across with a loud clang, as if Pip might throw herself at it and start pounding with her fists to break it off its hinges.
"Well, really!" she muttered.
There was no other sound from within the cottage, and it was obvious the housekeeper wouldn't relent and let her in, not even to warm her hands and feet a while by the kitchen fire.
The squawk of an angry crow cracked across the low, brittle, colorless sky, shattering the silence. Pip looked over her shoulder to find the bird lurking in the stark, wintering branches of a tree just over the dry-stone wall that separated the vicarage garden from the churchyard. The crow's shiny
black feathers stuck out like sharp prickles as it huddled against the wind, twitched its head to one side and let out another screech, reminding her that she was an unwelcome stranger there. As if she needed reminding.
Like her, the bird was all alone. His companions must have hidden from the weather, leaving one sentinel to guard the churchyard. Or else the crow had fought off any other pretender to his proud throne, high in that skeletal tree.
He reminded her of somebody, but she couldn't think who it might be.
The bird opened its beak for another scornful cry and then took off, swooping in a low circle over her head, before perching on a gravestone beyond the wall. It seemed to want to keep an eye on her, yet, at the same time, knew better than to get too close.
"You're lucky I don't have my bow and arrows," she assured him wryly. "You wouldn't be so smug then."
Caw.
Epiphany sighed heavily as the wind plucked at the ruffles of her shoulder and danced with a large feather in her veiled cap. The crow was right and she had stood there long enough in her cold boots.
Alas she had braved the winter weather that day to come all the way from Whitby on the mail coach and now, without even the sustenance of a warm cup of tea, she must turn around at once and go back. Her black velvet paletot was more decorative than functional and further snowfall seemed likely. A little had fallen that morning before she left Whitby and Lord Mortmain had advised her against going out— was so firmly in opposition to it, that he refused to let her have the family carriage— but Epiphany had great need of her dear friend Jonathan's counsel that day and she couldn't be talked out of the journey.
Now, her effort, and the risk she took of offending the Mortmains by willfully going off on her own, was all for nothing.
"Of course, it is not the first time my sister has run away," she muttered to herself as she marched down the garden path to the gate, "but she's twenty-three now, soon to be married, and far too old for tree-houses."
Since Jonathan Lulworth, the vicar of Thorford, was not in to help with her dilemma today, she would just have to manage this matter herself.
