‘Well, you might be able to overlook such behaviour, Aunt Jenny, but I certainly cannot, not under my own roof with innocent children sleeping in their beds not a dozen yards away.’
With a crash she flung open the door, her hand which held the doorknob losing its grip so that the door hit the wall violently. A draught of air eddied in with her, lifting the lace curtains at the open window, whispering about the quiet room and making the flame of the candle dance and flicker, casting dreadful shadows on the ceiling and walls. Before Jenny could stop her, or even catch her breath to speak, Laurel strode into the room, her small figure casting a huge shadow.
Drew had begun to move slowly away from the horror of the bodies which clutched at his own, from the weight which he knew was his brother Pearce, his brother who had no feet, indeed no legs; away from the tortured screams of men and horses and into the warm, scented presence of the woman whom he knew would be there, ready to welcome him back. His breathing had slowed to a peaceful calm, his turbulent body becoming quiet, and he sighed thankfully. He did not awaken, merely moved from one level of sleep to another, from the nightmare into the state of dreamless peace she brought him.
He awoke to confusion: to wildly dancing shadows, huge and distorted, to harsh cries and angry voices. There were people struggling. He did not know who they were in that first awareness and for a few moments he floundered, ready to call out to Pearce to come and give him a hand, or to Tessa to gather him into her arms; one of them, either would do, to be there for him, as there had always been someone. He struggled to sit up, to make some sense of it and he felt a calming hand on his shoulder, hers, and in that moment he knew what he must do to make himself complete again, secure again.
‘What the devil’s going on?’ He was ready to leap from his bed though he had on only a nightshirt, and casting modesty to the wind he threw back the bedclothes and stood up. Charlie, incredibly, was struggling with Laurel who was beseeching his Aunt Jenny – dear God, it was like a bloody circus – to do something before the good name of the family was completely ruined. It would be best, really it would, she cried, if Tessa went to Italy – couldn’t she see it? – and later, when Drew was settled in the mill, perhaps with some suitable young lady, Tessa could come back and . . .
‘For God’s sake, Mother, will you tell her to be quiet before I smack her silly face?’ Tessa was furious, ‘How dare she come in here with her vile insinuations, upsetting Drew . . .’
‘I’m not upset,’ he said and he meant it. For the first time since he and Pearce had left this house two years ago he felt filled with well-being, eager to fight with anyone who cared to take him on. He had no idea what was happening. He knew he had been dreaming, well, having one of his nightmares, and that for an awful moment his dream world had followed him from sleep, creating a fog of swirling shadows about his bed. Now he saw it was only Aunt Jenny, patient and enduring, Laurel and Charlie having some kind of argument, familiar and everyday . . . and Tessa.
‘You won’t be satisfied until you have driven us all to the point of madness with your stupid and quite unbelievable implications, will you?’ Tessa was shouting. ‘Have you no humanity in that self-centred mind of yours, or does the whole universe begin and end with what you consider proper? You listen to those feather-brained friends of yours who have nothing better to do than gossip over their teacups, ruining reputations with as much compunction as swatting a fly. Dream it up, if it does not exist, as you have decided to dream up this fantasy that Drew and I are . . . well, whatever that nasty mind of yours . . .’
‘Charlie, are you going to let this niece of yours insult . . . ?’
‘Insult? That is where your talents lie, Laurel, that and your gift for seeing villainy where there is none . . .’
‘I really believe you are quite mad, Tessa,’ Laurel said coolly, raising a fastidious eyebrow. She had decided, it appeared, to treat Tessa’s outburst with the disdain one shows to a child in a tantrum. Her husband’s reluctance to support her in this was really unforgivable and she would not forgive him, nor Tessa, her manner said. It was not in her nature to brawl like a fish-wife, particularly with the servants within earshot, as they were certain to be. But Tessa, driven at last to lose the patience and temper she had sworn to keep under control at least in Drew’s presence, had no such compunction.
‘I must be to have lived in the same house as you for nearly twenty years, and if I am you have driven me to it with your double-faced, double-tongued hypocrisy . . .’
‘How dare you.’ Laurel was white-faced, her eyes pure green slits of outrage but still her training as a lady, which Tessa surely was not, held her in check.
‘Tessa, I will not have this,’ Jenny said, trying to signal to Charlie to get his wife out of the room. ‘It cannot be good for Drew and it certainly makes me feel . . .’
‘. . . and if you think I shall allow you to . . .’
‘Tessa, that is enough.’ Her mother’s voice was like a pistol shot for though Tessa was perhaps only voicing Jenny’s own thoughts it did no good, none at all, to bring them to light now. Not now.
‘Thank you, Aunt Jenny. She really does deserve a good thrashing and if she were mine she would have one.’
‘That is for me to say, Laurel, not you.’
‘A baggage such as she is deserves . . .’
‘And what does that mean, Laurel Greenwood? What are you implying now, pray? That I stand on street corners like any common . . .’
‘Tessa!’
‘I do not imply anything, my girl.’ Laurel was incensed beyond care now, ready to say anything, anything, regardless of the truth: to wound her cousin in any way she could, and the more painful it was the better. ‘Dear God, it is no more than two years since you were disporting yourself all over the valley with that gentleman, if one can call him that, from the fox-hunting set of the Squire’s. God alone knows what you got up to with him but whatever it was, it surely must have escaped no one’s notice that he did not offer marriage. Really, Tessa, one can only hope that there is someone somewhere who has not heard of your reputation since the likelihood of your marrying seems very remote.’
The silence which followed was like the endlessly grey, endlessly deep waters of the lake in winter. Small, cruel ripples washed against the stricken girl who drowned in the centre of it. Her face was as white as her demure lawn nightgown, rigid, clenched with anguish, and she seemed unable to move, to speak, to defend herself. Her fiery temper, the strong and heedless defiance she had shown had been defeated, blown out like a candle, her vividness quenched, her spirit torn from her.
‘I would be most obliged, Charlie old chap, if you would remove your wife, my sister, from my room.’ Drew’s drawling voice was insolent in its intention to insult. ‘She really does need taking in hand, you know, and if you have not the backbone to do it, I would be delighted to give her the beating she deserves. One would think a woman of her age – what is it now, Laurel, thirty-two, thirty-three? – would have learned tact and indeed some common sense. And she is quite mistaken, you know.’
He moved lightly across the space which divided Tessa and himself, turning her to face him. He cupped her face gently with his hands, looking down into the deep, glacial grey of her stricken eyes. In his was the warm certainty of his intentions.
‘She is quite wrong, my darling,’ he said, heedless of the three people who watched. ‘I have known you and everything there is to know about you from the day you were born and it would be my joy and my honour to marry you. That is, if you will have me.’ Then he grinned impudently, just as once he had done, his humour and charm concealing from her the urgency with which he waited for her answer.
They saw the wretchedness leave her. They watched the stiffness, the awful steel-edged tension drain away and with a sigh of thankfulness she simply leaned into the arms which were held out to her.
20
‘You don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to, lass,’ her mother said to her, her expressi
on one of gentle understanding for only she knew of her daughter’s anguished love for Robby Atherton. To the rest of the household and community it had been no more than a girlish romance, the short-lived excitement of a gentleman whose curiosity and attention had been aroused by a pretty girl somewhat beneath his station in life; a restless, spirited girl who should not have been put forward, nor attracted his notice in the first place if she had been properly brought up. And the whole thing had come to naught, as these things have a way of doing, but leaving Tessa Harrison with a reputation irretrievably tarnished, which was why this marriage to her cousin was so timely.
‘I want to marry him, Mother. I love Drew, you know that, and he needs me. And I have no one else in my life, no one else I could share my future with. What better way to spend my life than with a man I have loved ever since I was a child? There is nothing else for me, Mother, you know that.’
‘But that is no reason to marry Drew, child. He is recovered now.’
‘That is because he knows I’m here to . . . protect him.’
Jenny looked surprised, then disbelieving.
‘No, Tessa, you mustn’t think that. If you believe that he can only live his life with you by his side then you are being . . . well, I was going to say coerced into marrying him. Oh, I know not deliberately since Drew wouldn’t do that to you, but unwittingly. You have been his . . . his crutch – no, don’t argue with me for that is the right word – ever since he got home. You have taken Pearce’s place by his side and have helped to heal him. Now I’m not saying I’m against the marriage, but I don’t want you to do it for the wrong reason. Drew is . . . a wild young man and you’re no meek and mild miss yourself, my girl, and I reckon when he gets over this gratitude he feels towards you and you overcome the sense of responsibility you seem to have for him, there’ll be fireworks. You’re a strong girl . . . woman . . . Tessa, and you’ll not take kindly to bonds . . .’
‘Bonds? Drew would not bind me.’ The uneasy calm which existed between Tessa and her mother flared up instantly into the tense friction left over from the grief they had shared two years ago. She was polite with Jenny, enough to hide the rift between them from the rest of the family, but the ease had gone from their relationship and would never be as it once was. She was aware that the devastation, the desolation had not been caused by her mother, just as the shell, aimed by a soldier’s hand, which had killed Pearce, could not be blamed for his death, but the bitterness remained in her heart just the same.
‘Drew is a man, child, and has all the male characteristics of possession, pride and pigheadedness. And you are a beautiful woman, yes, you might well stare and smile, but there is something about you, not just to do with the way you look, that men like.’
‘Oh, come now, Mother. When I’m Drew’s wife I’m hardly likely to attract men to my side.’
‘Why not? You have always been . . . different from other girls, mixing with that free and easy lot up at the Hall. Oh, yes, I hear about the goings on . . . Now don’t pull your face at me, my girl, since I know you, and I know you wouldn’t do anything to shame your family or yourself . . .’
Tessa turned abruptly away so that her mother could not see, and wonder at, the expression on her face.
‘. . . but your name is linked with it just the same. Drew is a friend of Nicky Longworth. The Squire seems to have taken a fancy to you both and at the moment, with Drew not entirely himself yet, there has been no discord. No . . . problems, shall we say. But let me tell you this: when you are his wife things will be very different. He is his father’s son with a capacity for enormous emotions, whether love, hate, jealousy or rage, of the most red-blooded kind.’
Tessa listened to her mother with every appearance of disbelief but her mind returned to that moment when she had been laughing with Nicky Longworth and the others at the Hall as she had done a dozen times before in the past. They accepted her cheerfully, as they had always done, seeing her not as a girl when she had tagged along with them, but as an appendage of Drew and Pearce. But she was a woman now and she had sensed the change in them, the speculation in their eyes. Admiring certainly, and still respectful for dare they be anything else in the company of Drew Greenwood? But assessing just the same, since she was an unattached girl whose reputation was somewhat questionable.
And Drew had not liked their recognition of her attractions, nor the way she had responded to it. It had amused her and, if she was honest, pleased the female in her, that was all, but he had not known that and his displeasure had been very evident. She had thought at the time it was his own fragile condition and state of mind but now, as she listened to her mother she recognised there had been something else there, something she had seen once before.
On the face of Will Broadbent!
‘I cannot let him down. He does need me, Mother.’
‘I think it might be you who needs him, Tessa. I think that is what you are saying. You have made up your mind there is no one else for you and so, because he has asked you and you feel beholden, you will marry him. To comfort yourself as well as him.’ Her mother’s voice became urgent. ‘But there will be someone for you one day, lass. Don’t rush into this thing because it is expected of you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.’ Then her manner softened somewhat ‘Don’t you see it would be suitable for both of us . . . ?’
‘Suitable! That is no reason for marriage, not in my opinion, though I daresay there are those who would argue with me over it.’
‘I only mean Drew and I really are alike. We are suited by our temperament and upbringing. We admire the same things, activities and . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘He knows I cannot abide housekeeping and doing all the things Laurel does . . .’
‘And what about Laurel? You and she do not get on. Are you prepared to live under the same roof with her for the rest of your days? This house is Drew’s inheritance and will one day be his. Laurel has run Greenacres for a long time now, and very competently, if we are to be fair to her. She looks on it as her home and unless you and Drew are prepared to ask her and Charlie and the children to find other accommodation you will have her at your dinner table, which she will consider to be hers, forever.’
‘I will not interfere with her. She is mistress here.’
‘No! You will be mistress. Your husband will be its master, is master now with Joss and Kit permanently abroad. You would do better with a housekeeper who could run the place, and Laurel in her own home elsewhere. Charlie could afford to buy a grand house where she could be in complete charge but it would mean you would have to settle to domestic duties . . .’
‘Good God, I couldn’t bear it. I’d rather have Laurel queening herself about the place.’
‘You could perhaps share the responsibility . . .’
‘Merciful heaven, how appalling. No, she does it so well, as you say, and I should be bored to death within a week. Besides, I want to help Drew.’
‘To do what?’
‘Well,’ she shrugged her shoulders since she was not sure, ‘in whatever it is he is to . . . to do.’
Jenny looked at her sadly, not awfully sure her daughter knew what marriage to Drew Greenwood entailed, and not awfully sure she wanted to tell her. He was a complex man, particularly since the death of his brother, always youthfully self-willed and ready to challenge any opinion which opposed his own. Now that he was a man would he not be doubly so? Pearce’s death had shattered him in a particularly subtle way, for they were not only brothers but twins. And the manner of Pearce’s death had been harrowing for in the back of Drew’s mind was surely the thought that his brother had died from wounds sustained as he rescued Drew from the Redan at Sebastopol. What nightmares dwelled in the mind of Drew Greenwood? What frailties remained to bring him down? What weaknesses which he might be unable to withstand? He had, almost overnight, become himself again, confident, positive, audacious even, his wit and charm a delight at the dinner table. He had even apologised to Laurel
and Charlie, begging their forbearance, claiming the strain of his recent illness, for what else could it be called? His good humour, at least to Charlie, proved irresistible, though his sister was less inclined to be forgiving.
The three months betrothal was something which must be got through with the best possible grace, he said to Tessa. It was expected of them. They were members of a family with obligations not only to each other, but to his father and mother, to her mother and to their position in the community. There would be parties and dinners in their honour and it would be churlish not to comply. Joss and Kit Greenwood were to come home at once, to see their only son married and also to attend to several legal matters which now arose because of it. There were many preparations which must be attended to, not the least Tessa’s wedding outfit and trousseau for her mother declared, despite the peculiarity of the betrothal, her daughter would not go to her marriage without a new shift to her name. And Laurel, her mouth grim, her face set in a mould of cold disapproval, was nevertheless determined to snatch every advantage she could from her brother’s connection with the gentry and would entertain as many as could be crammed into Greenacres in the three months prior to the wedding.
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