Though the words were for her father, her eyes held her husband’s and watched them change from surprise to the soft caress of love. Amusement, too, for this confession was so unlike the scalding Caterina they had encountered during their hostile marriage-broking.
Taken by surprise, Stephen Chester stared at Sir Chase as if for confirmation, but when the latter’s only reply was an enigmatic smile, his bitterness surfaced in a welter of self-pity. ‘Got her tamed, have you, sir? Well done. I wish you joy. I wish I had gained a wife who would say that about me with so little prompting. But there. She won’t. Not now.’
If Caterina was shocked, it showed only in the slight frown that disappeared as quickly as it had come. ‘Perhaps,’ she whispered, ‘if you had shown Hannah as much concern as you have for Harry over the years, she might have done. What has Harry done to give you happiness?’
‘He’s my eldest son, Caterina. My only son. He needs a good start in life, any father knows that. He’ll be given everything I wasn’t given. He’ll be a gentleman with enough wealth and property to take him to the top. Well,’ he corrected himself, ‘that was always my plan.’
‘To be a real gentleman, Chester,’ said Sir Chase, ‘he’ll have to start behaving like one, won’t he? Perhaps you could concentrate your efforts into that, rather than teaching him how to deceive his employers, abuse his father’s trust and squander his money.’
‘Did you not squander your father’s money, Sir Chase?’
‘No, I squandered my own. That was my choice and hurt no one but me. But perhaps young Chester could learn something about honesty and compassion and responsibility for his actions. And how to be discreet, too.’
‘At twenty years old, sir, it’s only to be expected.’
‘At twenty years old, I was responsible and so, I think, were you, sir.’
‘He’s still quite immature.’
‘All the more reason for you to keep him where you can see him, then.’
‘Why, what do you know about him?’
‘Enough. I took a large sum of money off him, remember?’
‘Father,’ said Caterina, turning the conversation away from her brother’s weaknesses, ‘you spoke of Hannah just now as if you had regrets. Is that so? Surely Hannah has done her best to make you a loving wife?’
There was a tiredness, a reluctance about him that made Caterina believe that her question was presumptuous. Indeed, it was a personal question that was none of her business; not the kind of enquiry she had ever made before. Then he seemed to relent, coming to stand by her side to watch the wind sway the pines, ruffling their fronds. ‘She has been a comfort to me,’ he said, ‘in a manner of speaking, but perhaps I should not have leapt into a second marriage as fast as I did. It’s always been a second-best arrangement.’
‘You mean second-best to Mother? You still miss her so?’
He sighed, lifting his scrawny sandy head to watch the rain fall in hesitant runnels down the window-pane, and his voice took on a different quality, rather like a dream that would never be caught. ‘Not your mother, Caterina. It was Amelie. Always Amelie.’
‘Aunt Amelie? Lady Elyot? Father, what are you telling me?’
‘I thought everyone would have guessed. She knows. I was the one to offer for her before Josiah, after your mother died.’
‘But she married your elder brother instead of you. Why?’
‘Because she was a dutiful daughter and her parents preferred Josiah’s offer to mine. He had the knighthood, the wealth, and eventually the inheritance. It was only natural. I was a widower with a family of three. I had to stand back.’
‘Oh, Father. I didn’t realise. But then, when Uncle Josiah died?’
‘I did everything I could to help her through it. It was a terrible few years and I know she was grateful, but it was never more than gratitude. She could not have stayed in Buxton with all the gossip.’ ‘So you still had hopes?’
‘Frail hopes. She took you to Richmond with her.’ ‘Ah, I see. That was to make her obliged to you.’ ‘No, it was not, Caterina. It was entirely for your sake. But then she and Lord Elyot found each other, as you know, and there was no competing with that. I suppose my idea was that, if I’d possessed the kind of wealth that Josiah and Lord Elyot had, I’d have stood more chance of impressing her, somehow. I married again because it was obvious I wasn’t going to win Amelie, and I agreed to move to Richmond ostensibly to please Hannah.’
‘Although it was really to be near Aunt Amelie?’ ‘And to live in the house on Paradise Road where she had once lived. That’s why I never wanted to move. But it was the wrong thing to do. I should have insisted on coming back here. I never felt as if I was part of the Richmond set.’
‘So that’s why you’ve never sold Chester Hall.’ ‘Yes, it was a place to return to, to lick my wounds. As you see. Now I shall be forced to sell it after all, though it’s a far better house to bring up a growing family. You loved it here, didn’t you?’
‘I did, when I was younger. I think you should make Chester Hall your home, Father. Hannah would love the space, and so would the children. I shall live wherever Sir Chase lives.’ Again, their smiles met, secretly.
‘Sell Paradise Road, you mean?’
‘Yes, sell up. Hannah won’t mind as long as you’re happy, and you’re a Derbyshire man, Father. Stop the ship-owning and the law-breaking and begin again in Buxton where Hannah can help you to make a new life. Aunt Amelie has always been very fond of you, but she has her own family now, and I doubt she’d be impressed if she knew how you’d been making money all these years. She’s as concerned about human welfare as the rest of us. How could you ever have thought that wealth would make the slightest difference to your standing with her?’
‘Because I’d tried everything else I could think of, short of abduction.’
She left the hint of desperation to speak for itself, for it would not be helpful to keep open the wound when she ought to be trying to close it. She had never known of her father’s strong feelings for Aunt Amelie, and although this confession could not excuse his immoral business, it did go some way towards explaining it, and his addiction to brandy.
Sir Chase’s impromptu contribution made them both start. ‘I’ll buy the house on Paradise Road from you, Chester,’ he said. ‘It would be quite useful for us whenever we want to visit Richmond. How would you feel about moving up here to live instead?’
Chester looked over his shoulder in surprise, slowly turning the rest of him to re-examine the man for whom nothing ever appeared to go wrong. ‘Relieved,’ he whispered, still unsure of Sir Chase’s motives. The caution showed in his voice. ‘I would be very relieved, if I can get out of this tangle without losing everything. I cannot carry on like this.’ A glistening drop of moisture gathered in the corner of one eye which he brushed away with a knuckle.
‘No,’ said Caterina, sternly. ‘You most certainly cannot, Father.’ With the skill of a pickpocket, she deftly lifted the flask of brandy out of his pocket and placed it on the tea tray. ‘And the sooner you learn to do without that, the easier it will be. You’ll have your work cut out in the next few weeks if you’re to free yourself and Harry from the mess without it becoming an open secret, and brandy isn’t going to help one bit. I don’t suppose Harry will help, either.’
‘But what about my letter?’ he cried, glaring at Sir Chase. ‘Hannah must never find out about this. Never!’
‘Father, Hannah will be the first to know, and Aunt Amelie, too, if you don’t immediately begin to wind up all your affairs in Liverpool and present Sir Chase with the evidence within three weeks. Then he’ll begin to negotiate to buy Paradise Road, and you can begin to move back to your own home. Won’t you?’ she said, looking across at her husband.
He had crossed his long legs and was looking up at the finely detailed plaster moulding over the large bay window, his face a picture of resignation. His yawn was too prolonged to be genuine. ‘Yes, my darling little termagant,’ he said, smoothly
. ‘If you say so.’
‘You’re surely not serious about that, are you?’ her father protested. ‘A few weeks is hardly going to be long enough to—’
‘Oh, yes, she is,’ said Sir Chase. ‘Devil take me, sir, she is very serious about these things, and so am I. I cannot afford to have my father-in-law mixed up in this shady business. I have been an active abolitionist too long for the mud-slinging to miss me when my wife’s father is deported to join Australia’s chain-gang community. That really would be too much, even for a man with my reputation. No self-respecting abolitionist could emerge from that kind of thing with his head held high.’
Father and daughter stared, overcome by amazement.
Stephen Chester had paled to the white of the plasterwork ceiling. ‘So that’s it,’ he whispered. ‘Where will I … er … find you? What address?’
‘In Richmond. I’ll contact you when we arrive.’
‘Richmond?’ said Caterina. ‘Why are we returning to Richmond?’
‘Peace, wife!’ he said, severely. ‘You will live wherever I live.’
‘Yes, husband,’ she said, blinking a little. ‘Would now be a good time to tell my father about the lead mine?’
Stephen Chester’s departure from Buxton would have been delayed even longer if Caterina had delved into every one of the grievances she held against him, but the mine disaster was more important and, after some heated argument, both she and Sir Chase managed to convince him that his first duty was to the miners’ families, not to himself or Harry. Reluctantly, he was made to agree with them while Caterina held her anger in check at his selfishly blinkered attitude, even now.
‘A leopard doesn’t change its spots,’ Sir Chase commented drily, after watching her silent fuming that same afternoon in Centre House. ‘He’ll do no more than he has to, then he’ll be off up to Liverpool. But he’d better sort himself out, my sweet. He’ll not find me a soft touch in this business, as he thought he had in the last.’
She said nothing to that, still irritated by the argument which, in her eyes, should not have been necessary. Whatever her father did as a result of these catastrophes would be first and foremost in his own and Harry’s interests, not anyone else’s. That much was certain. With that in mind, she had withheld the question concerning the way he had negotiated her marriage. It would have to wait.
There was one question, however, about which she needed more information. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said indignantly, opening one of the sash windows with a screech. The wind was beginning to moderate, the heavy rain clouds scudding away into the distance with a watery sun spying through a small patch of blue. ‘About being an abolitionist?’
He replaced a glass paperweight he had been examining. ‘Because, my child, you would have added two and two together and come up with something like ninety-nine. It’s a habit of yours I was made aware of quite early in our relationship.’
‘Quite the contrary,’ she snapped, lifting a spider carefully off the sill. ‘If you had declared yourself at the beginning, I would have known where I stand all the sooner.’
‘Oh? And where do you stand now that you know?’
‘More on your side than I was then.’
‘But I didn’t want you on my side then. I enjoyed the sparring.’
‘Whether I enjoyed it or not. Thank you. That was helpful.’
‘You enjoyed it, too. Don’t pretend you didn’t.’
‘There was absolutely no need to keep it a secret from me.’
‘Talking about secrets, are we? Does that apply to you, too, or do you have a special dispensation to hide things from your husband?’
‘I suppose you’re referring to the documents I removed …’
‘To the stolen letter and IOU. Yes. Where are they?’
‘In my writing-desk. I was going to show them to you,’ she said, chastened by his severity and the hard hazel eyes that followed her all the way to the door with no promise of pardon. With a last attempt at defiance, she stood half-in, half-out. ‘If you’re going to be …’
His eyes narrowed, and the rest of her challenge went unsaid.
Moments later, the air in the sunny drawing-room was charged with expectation as Sir Chase read the letter that supplied him with details, clenching and unclenching the muscles in his jaw. Then, laying it down on the table beside his elbow, he gave a grunt of disgust. ‘Ye gods!’ he said. ‘What an asset to the Chester family. With a son like that, any more disasters would seem like an overdose even to Job himself.’ Picking up the crumpled IOU, he scanned it briefly then calmly tore it into shreds which he laid on the open letter.
Caterina observed, loving every move he made, fascinated by his self-composure. She would have debated for weeks before doing such a thing, even with her natural impetuosity. ‘You can afford to do that, can you?’ she said. ‘Is it really of no use to you?’
His eyes rested on her, searching her face for a meaning. ‘Whatever reason you had for taking it has passed, sweetheart. Do you think I should kick him while he’s down, then? Is that what you’d have me do? I don’t want anything he’s got now, sweet girl. I’ve won.’
‘I just wondered what you’d do, if you had the chance.’
‘Then stop wondering. It’s not nearly as complex as you think.’
‘What do I think? How would you know?’
‘If you sit down, I’ll tell you what you think.’
Obediently, she sat in the winged chair opposite him where a fresh draught from the window brought the faint scent of new-washed leaves and grass. ‘It was not by chance that you won so much from my brother in London, was it?’ she said, still half-hoping to catch him off guard, to uncover a new layer of meaning to events. ‘You knew then of my father’s slaving, didn’t you, and that was your way of punishing him? Have I got it right? But instead of that, you did him a favour. That’s what I can’t quite understand.’
‘No, I did myself a favour. I was never concerned about your father’s feelings. They’re not easy to understand, in any case. And, yes, you’re right in assuming that I intended to relieve your brother of as much as he’d wager. It was not particularly difficult because, for one thing, he doesn’t have a gambler’s memory and, for another, he knew your father would always bail him out. What I find difficult to understand is why your father allows it, year after year, while he gripes about being stumped for cash. That takes some explaining that goes deeper than his need to set your brother up as a wealthy gentleman, especially when he’s kept everyone else on a very fine line.’
‘Security,’ Caterina said. ‘Taking matters into his own hands. But what did you intend to do with twenty-thousand guineas, if my father had not agreed to your offer?’
‘If I’d not won the wager, you mean? Ah, but I never make a wager with something as important as that if I’m not quite sure I can win it. I’d have won you, however long it took. Your father would have extended the deadline, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, you conceited oaf!’ she yelped, springing to her feet. ‘I’ve heard enough. You were supposed to be telling me what I think and you’ve done nothing of the kind, sir. I think you’re conceited, cocksure, high-handed….’ From the corner of her eye she saw him leap out of his chair, and she wheeled away round the table to dodge him, tripping over one of its ball-and-claw feet and wasting seconds as she recovered, swaying just out of his reach with a yell of, ‘Arrogant puddle-head! I should never have told you how I feel, should I? I ought to have kept it to myself. No … get off! Now you’re so smug with your success … get off me! I take it all back. You’re horrid! And I shall not go back to Richmond with you. So there!’
But now she was trapped inside his arms, one hand closed around her chin like a goblet while he drank from her lips, silencing her protests. She struggled against him, already regretting her former urge to tell of her unexpected happiness, for they had never spoken of love, only shown it in a thousand small signs that lovers use, and now she had handed him an advantage he certainly had
no need of.
Furious, and in no mood to concede more ground, she tried with all her might to hold him off, fearing that she stood little chance against his superb fitness. Losing her balance, she was pushed backwards onto the yellow silk-covered sofa with sausage-shaped bolsters that sighed as she hit them as if they’d seen this kind of thing before. She was covered by him as she fell, and it was with some difficulty that she continued to fight, and then not too convincingly.
‘One can go off people, you know,’ she growled.
He scooped her legs up and lay over her again, holding the wrist that came between them. ‘Is that so, my beauty? That’s not quite how I understood it to be. So what you told your father was not true?’ His face was too close to hers for anything but the truth, and the passion that darkened his eyes told her that he knew of her love and that no protesting would convince him otherwise. ‘I know what’s angering you,’ he whispered. ‘You think your father and I had some other plan up our sleeves which you were not aware of, other than our wager, I mean. Well, we didn’t, my love. That was all there was to it. I went to Paradise Road to return the phaeton, determined to make him honour the debt. Yes, I did know that he was still slave-trading from Liverpool because I’ve been up there and seen one of his ships. I knew he could well afford to pay. I got one of his crew drunk enough to tell me where the ship had been and what it carried, which confirmed what I suspected. I could have exposed him any time I wanted, but that was not what I wanted, at the time. The abolitionist society that I am a member of has an excellent network, my sweet, and news soon gets around, and there are other ways of changing men’s minds without sending them all the way to Australia to do it.
‘But when I saw you,’ he continued, ‘everything changed. Suddenly, I wanted you more than anything in the world. Even more than that kind of money. I fell instantly in love, sweetheart. Madly. Desperately.’
Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire Page 50
