Suppressing the urge to set a beautiful stitch to hold her aunt’s mouth shut, Kate continued up the stairs to her chamber. Was this what she was to be reduced to—darning sheets! Alicia did not even trust her to play nursemaid. Giles, who was off to inspect a horse somewhere, had asked Phaedra to accompany him. Giles had always favoured Phaedra. In a family of six siblings—eight if you counted Ross and Araminta—there were bound to be alliances and differences, but while she was undoubtedly well down the chain of popularity, Kate couldn’t count herself as the favourite of a single one. Even dearest Ned had preferred Giles.
She threw herself onto the window seat and drew a frowning moon face in the condensation caused by her breath on the window pane. Drawing was another accomplishment she had not mastered. Her attempt at a horse had reduced Phaedra to tears of laughter once. She wiped the face away with her hand. It wasn’t like her to be moody. She wondered how Virgil was getting on at New Lanark. She envied Virgil this trip. She envied Robert Owen Virgil’s company.
Heavens, but she missed Virgil. There, she could admit that. No one could see inside her head the way he did. No one seemed particularly interested in her, the way he was. No one had ever made her feel the way he did.
Goodness, but she wanted him too. His body. His touch. His kisses. Their passion. Remembering what it had been like to have Virgil inside her made her muscles clench into a shiver. Alone in bed, she touched herself as Virgil had done, but it wasn’t the same. She wanted his fingers. His mouth. His body.
Giles hadn’t asked after Virgil once since he had gone, despite the fact that he’d been more than happy to monopolise him when he was here. It could be tact, of course, but Kate wasn’t in the frame of mind conducive to giving anyone any credit. A man of ideas, Giles had called Virgil, but he had never considered him as anything other than a mild distraction from the burdens of trying to pull the estate out of the financial crisis in which their father’s unfortunate investments had left them. Aunt Wilhelmina had practically danced in the wake of Virgil’s departure. And Phaedra was so caught up in her horses that she barely noticed anything or anyone else. Whereas Kate…
Outside in the driveway, her aunt was being helped into the landau by John Coachman. She and Aunt Wilhelmina would never be close, but the stand-off they had reached, if not outright peace, was at least better than open warfare. Though her aunt remained almost as sceptical as Giles about Alicia’s claims, contradictorily, she seemed to accept without question the child’s parentage. She remarked pointedly and repeatedly that Crispin’s arrival gave Kate the perfect opportunity to practice her role as aunt.
But the fact was, Kate thought, watching Alicia lifting the boy into the carriage, now that the hiatus of Alicia’s arrival was over, and Alicia herself was patently able to take care of her own interests and equally wary of the friendship Kate offered, there was very little for Kate to do. Alicia’s lawyer was negotiating a settlement for her. He was insisting on joint guardianship. His Grace would be obliged to consult her on all matters pertinent to Crispin’s well-being. She would take care, too, she told Kate, that His Grace understood that nothing short of death would separate her from her child. She would see that Crispin had what was entitled to him.
Alicia was evidently not so fragile as her appearance gave everyone to believe. Kate was relieved. She looked forward to the day, which must surely come, when Alicia did pitched battle with the duke. She would not lay odds against her.
‘Devil take it, I will not spend the day mending sheets!’ Kate threw herself from the window seat, then stopped short. There were plenty of things she could be doing. Much more important things. If only she could think of them.
‘Lady Kate, I’m so sorry, but this letter was overlooked in the mailbag this morning.’
Daisy’s head poked round the bedchamber door. Kate’s mouth went quite dry as she took the epistle. She had never seen the neat script before. There was no cause at all to imagine that it would be from him, and even if it was, it did not necessarily mean anything. ‘Thank you.’
Kate locked the door behind Daisy and with trembling hands sat down again on the window seat to break the wafer.
It was from Virgil, and it was everything and nothing. Scanning it quickly, aware that her heart was beating fast, that she was shaking, Kate lurched from anticipation to extreme disappointment in the space of a few seconds. She read it again, forcing herself to go more slowly now, but there was nothing personal in it at all. Virgil had written her an account of New Lanark ‘in order that you may better understand Owen’s methods as well as his theory,’ he wrote. There was no return address. Only a postscript, informing her that he would not be returning to Stoke to see Josiah, but would conclude their business in London. She would never see him again.
She had thought she had understood that. She had thought she had accepted it. She had not. Staring at the letter, reading it for a third time, and for a third time failing to find anything remotely personal, the dreadful truth which she had hidden away, ignored, denied, buried deep down inside her, peeped out.
‘Oh, no, not that.’ Oh, heavens, let her contrariness not have led her to that. Surely she couldn’t possibly have been so stupid as to fall in love with him?
But it was too late, and it had nothing to do with contrariness, her love for Virgil. ‘Well done, Kate,’ she said bitterly. ‘Trust you to give your heart to the one man in the world determined not to have it.’
She loved him. She had thought herself incapable of love, but it seemed she was wrong. When had she stopped being afraid? She didn’t know, but sometime between the day at the Rothermere Arms and now, she seemed to have crossed the border and left the past behind. She had paid for her mistakes with Anthony in full. What’s more, she had, she realised with surprise, accepted that trying to become the person her aunt and her father wished her to be was wrong. Worse than wrong, it would make her unhappy. Virgil said she had to forgive herself. She hadn’t really understood what he’d meant, but it seemed she’d done it all the same.
If only Virgil could forgive himself too—but that, Kate knew, looking down at her letter, really was asking the impossible. She loved him, but he would never, ever love her back. No one understood her as Virgil did. No one would ever touch her, mind or body, as he did. She could not imagine that anyone ever would.
Tears clogged her throat, but she would not let them fall. She had promised him that she would try to be happy. In this letter he had written, there was no love, but there was much which could help her to follow some of her dreams. Sniffing resolutely, Kate took it over to her desk and began to read it again.
Robert Owen, Virgil told her, employed one of his former mill workers and a young village girl to teach the infants without books. Mr Owen boasted that his mill workers were the happiest, healthiest and most productive of any in the country, though Virgil was not convinced they were all equally so. In the evenings, they attended classes and dancing lessons. There followed a host of facts and figures which Virgil hoped would give Kate the real evidence, practical proof, to make her patrons pay attention.
Kate smiled as she read Virgil’s views on some of Mr Owen’s more controversial methods, then she drew a clean sheet of paper onto the blotter, dipped her pen in the inkwell and began to make notes.
* * *
Virgil reached Glasgow in the early afternoon. The crowd of ships on the river Clyde marked his progress towards the bustling city, long lines of them anchored in the channel with their heavy sails furled; the exposed rigging looked like complex trails of cobwebs slung between the masts. There was a constant to-ing and fro-ing of small boats ploughing the waters from the ships to the wharfs like worker ants.
As the Edinburgh mail approached the town itself along roads thick with mud it slowed, weaving through the clutter and throng of carts and drays, of carriages and sedan chairs, avoiding stray dogs and clucking hens and a herd of lowing cattle being brought back from the common grazing grounds in the west to their byres in the eas
t.
The mighty cathedral rose high on the hill above the city. In amongst the cluster of smallholdings and cottages which dotted the land nearest the river, merchants made rich by tobacco, sugar and slaves had built huge mansions. The foundations of a large house stood oddly in the midst of a field planted with cabbages. Further east, just before the Trongate, inns and taverns of the lower sort contested the traditional space of houses and food markets.
Virgil stopped at the posting house only to eat the half crown ordinary of mutton and barley stew. Ramshorn Kirk, where Louisa Gordon was buried, was known locally as the Merchant’s Graveyard. Armed with directions, the gold locket tucked safe in an inside pocket of his coat, he set out on foot. Glasgow owed much of its wealth to the crop he had spent a large part of his life growing and harvesting and he was eager to see what his servitude had created. Though the trade was no longer what it had been, there was a time when almost every hogshead of tobacco grown in Virginia had come through this city.
He walked up to the cathedral past the cheese and meat markets, whose business was done for the day. Descending the hill via the university and skirting the large expanse of the green where lines of washing flapped in the breeze, he came to the tower of the tollbooth prison. In the paved square outside, he stopped to watch the merchants hold court while those wishing to do business with them vied for attention.
By the warehouses and offices which lined the docks, the air was thick with the scent of spices, sugar and, above all, tobacco. That sweet, almost rotten smell made Virgil stop in his tracks, oblivious of the bustle around him, of clerks with their tied documents, of ships’ crews in search of their next voyage, of the warehousemen who lurked in the alleyways taking a sly break, and through it all the merchants who strutted and preened. Eleven years ago, the tobacco which had been packed by the strike breakers would have come here. Twelve years ago, thirteen, fourteen, more, the hogsheads he had packed himself would have been sold on at this exchange, too, more than likely. Now he was probably richer than any of these merchants. If he wanted to, he could outbid them all for tobacco, sugar, molasses, silks. The knowledge gave him no pleasure. How many schools and libraries and houses would be enough? Kate’s question haunted him. It would never be enough. Never. Because his crime was so great? Or because he was looking at it all the wrong way?
He stopped abruptly in front of the Trade’s House. It looked uncannily familiar. He could not imagine why at first, and then he saw it. The carved pediment above the pillared entrance, the pleasing symmetry of the building. It reminded him of Castonbury.
Kate.
Kate had said he had to forgive himself. Kate had said that this locket he carried was someone else’s past. Kate had said he would never be free. He missed her. God, he missed her. That last day, when he’d told her to be happy, he hadn’t meant it. He did want her to be happy, but not with another man. Not with any man. Except him.
But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
The graveyard was north of the river, just a few hundred yards from the Trade’s House. It was raining as he entered it, a long narrow space enclosed by warehouses on three sides. Gloomy. Ominous. It did not feel particularly peaceful. He would not like this to be his last resting place.
Reading the stones, he could see how the place got its name. Tobacco, sugar, cloth—the remains of any number of merchants lay here with their families, touting their wealth in the huge slabs of stone which covered their crypts. Several of the tombs were large enough to be enclosed by wrought iron fencing. The Gordon tomb was one such. Virgil turned the heavy latch, relieved to find it was not locked.
Tragic, Kate had called Malcolm Jackson’s story. If Louisa Gordon had married her lover and gone to the New World, she would not now be lying beneath this cold, damp sod. A month’s happiness, a year’s, or many more, she would have had with her husband. Had Kate been Louisa, she would not have stayed behind alone. If Kate had been Millie, she would not have killed herself.
Virgil sank down onto the gravestone and opened the locket. Kate would not have given up as Millie had. Kate would have known without him having to tell her that he would come back for her, because Kate understood him. No one had ever understood him as Kate had. Could he forgive himself?
If he did not, one thing was for sure; he would never be free of his chains. The past kept him bound and manacled. He could not undo it, he could repent it and he could try and make good, but how much good was enough? He could build schools and libraries and model villages even. He could give others the opportunity to free themselves, but still deny himself that chance. Kate was right. He was still in shackles.
Millie would not have wanted that. Would Millie have forgiven him? Freedom was about having choices. He’d made some poor choices, and he’d paid for them, but Millie had chosen too. She’d chosen death over hope. Kate said that Millie would have forgiven him. That hadn’t ever sat right with Virgil. Millie had made it impossible for Virgil to be forgiven. Wasn’t the point that he had to forgive her?
He tried to remember what it felt like to be with Millie—to laugh with her, to walk with her, to make love to her—but it was like someone else’s memories. Even the images from that fateful last day which had been so painfully fresh when he’d painted them for Kate seemed to be fading. Perhaps his confession had been cathartic, after all.
He’d been a boy when he’d fallen in love with Millie. Their passion had been joyful, but nowhere near as intense as what he’d felt making love to Kate. When Kate climaxed she looked right at him. When he was inside her, inside the intoxicating heat of her, he felt as if she was inside his head, as if she was communing with him. He hadn’t ever felt that with Millie.
Could he really forgive himself? And even if he could, and come to terms with what Millie had done, too, where did that leave him?
It left him without Kate.
Virgil took out his pocket knife and began to dig a hole. He dropped the locket into it, and said a last prayer for Malcolm Jackson and Louisa Gordon. Maybe in the next world he and his Louisa were together.
Virgil was in this world, and he had no desire to quit it yet. If he could forgive himself, he had a future, and he was damn sure he didn’t want to live it alone. Closing the gate of the crypt behind him, he made his way quickly back to the posting house. Eleven years of celibacy. It seemed so obvious now that it had been easy because he hadn’t met Kate. He did love her. He had no idea what she felt for him, but he did love her. He had done everything possible to kill any feelings for him she may have had, but that last day at the inn…
Could he hope? Dare he hope? He had been afraid to love her because he was terrified of losing her, but if he didn’t ask her, if he didn’t try, then he’d have lost her anyway. He missed her so much. Now that he had allowed himself to consider the possibility, he couldn’t bear to think of how empty his future would be without her. It was all very well to insulate yourself against hurt by denying yourself affection, but it was too late for that now. He had to see her. He could not wait to see her.
He ran the last half-mile to the posting house. ‘Change of plan,’ he said to the landlord. ‘I need to hire a post chaise and six. Now.’
* * *
Kate rose each morning with a list of tasks constructed overnight and went about them methodically, focusing on achieving something new every day. She made the days long. She worked hard. She did not cry, or lament, or allow herself to dwell on her hopeless love. Virgil was gone. There was nothing she could do about it, and all she could do to keep her heart intact was to be true to what she had promised him. It was not her way to try to change what she could not. She was a survivor, one who coped and continued regardless, and this was how she found the reserves to face each day. She loved him and would always love him, but there was nowhere for her love to live, and so she kept it hidden, tucked up inside her like a wingless bird. Helping others had always been her consolation. She would simply have to help them a lot more now.
&nb
sp; This morning, the first task on her list was to see Alicia, and finally bring her up to date with the contents of Harry’s letter.
‘I have some news.’
They were sitting in the drawing room of the Dower House. The child, Crispin, played contentedly in the corner with a set of wooden blocks. Jamie’s wife looked well, dressed in a morning gown the same colour of blue as her eyes. Her fair hair was prettily dressed, tied in a top knot which fell in a cluster of curls around her neck. She did not wear a widow’s cap. Aunt Wilhelmina had been vocal upon this subject at dinner. Alicia looked much too young to be a widow. She was much too beautiful to hide her charms under a cap. Not that there was anyone in Castonbury to appreciate Alicia’s charms that Kate could think of.
Had Alicia loved Jamie? Loving Virgil as she did made Kate look at everyone differently. Now she knew the signs, it was obvious to her that Giles was deeply in love with Lily. Of Alicia’s feelings she was not at all certain. There were times when she seemed quite cold, indifferent almost, in the way she said Jamie’s name, as if he was not her husband but a stranger. Of course, she had Crispin to remind her of Jamie and so no real need to talk about him, Kate supposed. Polly said she’d never been in love and thank the Lord for having been spared. Despite everything, Kate was glad she had not been spared.
The Lady Who Broke the Rules Page 20
