“Oh?” Beals raised a brow. “I understood she meant to return home immediately.”
“I—that is, she—we—”
“Say no more.” Beals laughed again and raised a staying hand. “A perfectly understandable change of plans, under the circumstances.”
“And which circumstances would those be?” snapped Andrew.
“Why, proximity, for one,” Beals replied, unruffled. “Even if she did not mean to be in this part of the world, she’s here now and likely won’t be again for some time. And some folks think of Christmas as a time for family, setting aside old differences, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, of course,” Andrew agreed, relieved. “I imagined you meant—no matter.”
They sat together in silence for several minutes after that, until Beals cleared his throat and prompted, “A medical matter, you say? You are well, I trust?”
“Well enough.”
“And your mother? She must have been overjoyed at your return. I hope it wasn’t too much for her heart.”
“She seems strong enough,” Andrew said, not conscious he had raised his hand to his face until he felt the chill of his own fingers against his cheek. “Though I suppose it might be difficult to tell . . .” His voice trailed off and he finally shrugged and muttered under his breath, “delicate condition.”
The phrase startled Beals into a more upright position. He took off his spectacles, polished them against his waistcoat, then threaded them over his ears once more, as if a smudge on one of the lenses had somehow interfered with his hearing. “Did you say ‘delicate condition’? I believe I must’ve misunderstood you, Cap’n. Surely you didn’t mean to suggest that your mother is—er—? That is, she can no longer be a young woman, beggin’ your pardon.”
“My mother? In a delicate—? No. Good God, man. I was speaking of the sex in more general terms. Fragile. Prone to mysterious maladies.”
Beals’s lips appeared to try out several replies before his voice joined in. “Er—yes. I—I gather that’s true. Never had many female patients, myself.”
“Oh.” As if disappointment were a physical weight, Andrew slid further down in the chair. “No. Of course you haven’t.”
“Still,” Beals said, studying his posture with one raised brow, “I rather think I know enough to answer a simple question or two, if something is preying on your mind, lad. Some worry about your mother, or . . . well, any other lady of your acquaintance.”
He must know. And Bewick, too. Likely the whole crew of the Fair Colleen knew. Or if they did not know, they surely suspected. They would’ve been fools not to suspect. And Andrew had never made a habit of sailing with fools.
Pushing himself out of the chair, Andrew stood and began to pace. “How soon does one know for certain if a woman is with child?” he asked when he paused before the window, feigning interest in the frost-coated shrubbery. Bewick had disappeared from sight.
“Your . . . your sister you’re worrying about, is it?” Beals asked.
Andrew turned sharply. “Sister? I haven’t any—” he began and then stopped. The man surely knew he had no sister, and a single glance confirmed it. They stared at one another for a long moment, until Andrew tipped his chin instead and muttered, “Aye.”
“Then your concern is understandable. Understandable. Well, now, confirming a pregnancy can be a tricky case. The quickening— when the babe begins to move—is the surest sign, although many a woman will say she knows much sooner.”
“When her courses cease.”
Beals looked surprised by his knowledge. “That is one symptom, yes.”
“So, within a very few weeks, even a month or so, a woman may begin to suspect—” His voice was rising, in spite of himself. Seeking a distraction, he picked up a glass specimen case containing a half-dozen mosquitos, fat with blood.
“She may,” Beals interjected, calm as always, “but there are other conditions that may disrupt her usual cycle. A strain on the body, lack of proper nutrition, an illness—”
“Seasickness?” he asked, forgetting for a moment his determination to be discreet.
“If the case were severe enough, perhaps,” he admitted. “Such as Miss Holderin experienced, for instance . . .”
“Who said anything of Miss Holderin?”
“I meant nothing by it, lad,” Beals said soothingly, shaking his balding head as he lifted the fragile box from Andrew’s fingers and replaced it safely on a shelf. “Just a—a familiar case, I suppose you’d say. A point of reference. In a situation where a young woman has undergone something stressful, some brief disruption of her courses is normal and no cause to assume a pregnancy. Have I answered your question?”
Before Andrew could reply, the door swung open and Bewick entered, carrying a tea tray and wearing—good God—an apron over his clothes. His eyes met Andrew’s on the far side of the room, but neither one spoke, as if they had come to some prior agreement that comments about Bewick’s unaccustomed domesticity were off-limits. Which, of course, they were. After so many years, Andrew had imagined he knew these two men—that they were rebels and rogues like himself. As they all stood together in a cozy room in a rose-covered cottage in Hampstead, however, such labels no longer seemed fitting. Perhaps they never had been.
“Join us for a cup?” Beals offered, indicating the chair Andrew had vacated, the one that was so obviously Jeremiah Bewick’s usual place of repose.
“I cannot,” he demurred, stepping toward the door as Bewick moved further into the room. “I have taken up enough of your time.”
“An’ he’s got a business to run,” Bewick added, setting down the tray with a clatter.
Andrew nodded absently. He had been assuming his fate was already decided, but Beals had given him reason to believe that Tempest might not be carrying his child after all. And if he were not to be bound to her, he supposed he need not be tied to a desk in Mincing Lane, either.
“For the time being, at any rate,” he agreed with a nod as he let himself out.
All the way home, the surgeon’s words swirled in his brain, producing an occasional twinge—of relief, he told himself, not regret.
No, certainly not regret.
Chapter 16
By the time they reached Yorkshire, the weather had changed dramatically. Not colder, as had been promised, but warmer—warm enough that Emily had thrown off her share of the lap blanket, Tempest had been persuaded to put down her hood, and the sound of mud sucking at the carriage wheels filled their nervous ears. Hannah had long since abandoned her perch beside the coachman in favor of a place inside, her visions of romance sullied by the droplets of mud being flung up by the horses’ hooves, spattering her clothes, her face, and her hair.
So it was that all three women sat crowded together in the carriage—along with a regrettably dirty Caliban, who had managed to break free of Tempest’s hold at their last stop to chase the innkeeper’s cat—when the coach turned and made its way along the narrow lane that ended at Crosslands Park.
Once London-born Hannah had turned up her nose at the square-built stone manor house surrounded by moorland, she abandoned her position at the window to Tempest, who was left to imagine what kind of life her grandfather lived in what looked to her to be an entirely lifeless place. Emily had written to warn of their arrival, but Tempest had been unwilling to wait for a reply, and she suddenly wondered whether they would even find him at home. Only a thin wraith of smoke winding its way from the central chimney block indicated the house was inhabited at all.
But when the carriage wheels crunched across the gravel sweep and rolled to a stop in front of the pillared portico, a groom trotted out from somewhere to assist the coachman with the horses while a dark-suited butler opened one of the double doors and bowed them into the house.
“I will let Sir Barton know you have arrived.”
While he went on his errand, a footman took their wraps, and a maid materialized to show Hannah to the rooms that had been assigned to them. Tempe
st hardly noticed the disappearances. Her attention was entirely taken up with searching the paneled entry hall for some sign of her grandfather. Only when Emily laid a hand on her arm and indicated with a nod that the butler had returned and they were to follow him upstairs, did she understand he did not mean to come to welcome them.
Although the man shared Williams’s unapproachably erect carriage and serious expression, Tempest nonetheless ventured a question. “My grandfather is . . . well?”
“His health is what it ever has been, ma’am,” was all the butler’s reply before they stopped at a paneled door, which he opened with the words, “Miss Holderin and Mrs. Beauchamp, sir,” and left them.
Tempest closed her eyes and steeled herself for a very old man, dour, an invalid perhaps, confined to a chair near the fire. When she had gathered sufficient courage to look into the room, she found she had been right in one respect. He was beside the hearth. Hanging above him was a life-sized portrait in oils, the baronet in tweeds with his gun over his shoulder and a pack of leggy pointers milling around his knees. The painting was not recent, but one glance lower confirmed that very little had changed.
Her grandfather stood with one arm leaning against the elegantly carved mantelpiece, although anyone could see he did not require the support. He reminded her of no one so much as the Fair Colleen’s quartermaster, Mr. Bewick—just as wiry, if somewhat less weathered, with white hair that might once have been ginger.
As if he were unaccustomed to company, or at least uncertain how to greet these particular guests, he waited until Emily and Tempest had made their way to the center of the room before coming forward a few steps to meet them.
“Mrs. Beauchamp,” he said with a bow, and Emily dipped a curtsy.
“Grandfather,” Tempest said, stretching out her hands.
He did not immediately take them. Instead he studied her features by the wintry afternoon light spilling into the room from a pair of tall windows. “So very like my Angela,” he murmured, almost to himself. For a moment, she imagined he might embrace her. When he instead took a step backward, she dropped her arms to her sides, embarrassed by her impulsive gesture. “Why, it’s as if Thomas Holderin contributed no part of you,” he added after further scrutiny, a note of relief in his voice. “Except, of course, that ridiculous name.”
The breath she had been holding whooshed from her lungs, leaving her momentarily light-headed. “Yes, Grandfather. I am Tempest,” she said and curtsied.
“I hope our arrival has not come as a shock to you,” Emily said, diverting his attention.
“No,” he said with an expression that hinted at displeasure. “I received your letter. Although I had already been alerted to your intentions a week or so ago by a piece of correspondence from Mr. Cary.”
“Edward wrote to you?”
Her grandfather’s eyes snapped back to her face, disapproval—perhaps at her familiar form of address for an employee—now etched into his features. “He did.” Without shifting his gaze, he reached into the breast of his coat and withdrew a folded paper. “His letter also enclosed this. For you.”
Tempest did not know her hand was trembling until she touched the paper and made it flutter. Were her grandfather’s fingers cold or warm? She did not reach forward far enough to find out. “Thank you.”
“How long do you plan to stay?”
Before she could answer with anything like the truth—that she could be gone as soon as the carriage could be made ready—Caliban burst into the room, indifferent to the butler’s shout and easily eluding the arm that grabbed through the doorway to stop him. Paws and belly coated with mud, mostly dried, he scouted out the room, sniffing here and there before making his way not to Tempest’s side, but to her grandfather’s. Stopping before the man, he sat abruptly, raised one paw, and gave a sharp bark of greeting.
“Caliban!” she and Emily gasped in unison.
But Sir Barton looked more curious than perturbed. “And who is this fine fellow?” He leaned forward to shake the offered paw, ignoring the dirt. Though his face was partly hidden from view, Tempest could have sworn he smiled. Flicking her gaze from the man and dog standing before her to the portrait above the fire and back again, she felt amazement give way to understanding—and perhaps just a hint of envy. If only her arrival had inspired such a warm welcome.
Emily, however, seized the unexpected discovery of Sir Barton’s soft spot as an opportunity. “We mean to stay through Christmas, Sir Barton,” she interjected in her coaxing, musical voice. “If it’s quite convenient. Your granddaughter is looking forward to getting to know you.”
“You are Irish,” he said, turning his head toward her without rising, disregarding her words in favor of the accent with which they had been spoken. Tempest could not decide whether there was a criticism implicit in the observation. Emily merely dipped her head in assent.
“Mrs. Beauchamp’s son captained the ship on which I sailed from Antigua,” Tempest explained, hoping the connection would satisfy him and preclude any awkward questions about her chaperone for the voyage.
Sir Barton considered this piece of information before at last returning Emily’s bob with one of his own. “Then I suppose I am in his debt,” he said, straightening at last, though his hand still rested on the dog’s ears. “You must wish to rest after your long journey. Porter will show you to your rooms.”
Accepting his instructions as dismissal, Tempest turned to leave. Caliban’s ears pricked up and his warm brown eyes followed her to the door, though his body did not. As her foot crossed the threshold, her grandfather spoke again, and she hesitated, though she could not face him. “We keep country hours,” he added unapologetically. “Dinner will be served promptly at four.” With a sharp nod of acknowledgment, she threaded her arm through Emily’s and nearly dragged her through the door.
Porter, the butler, was waiting outside the room for them and led them silently to an upper floor. From the doorway, Tempest took stock of the first room he showed them. Painted a soft blue and trimmed in ivory, Emily’s suite overlooked the front of the house, the gravel sweep, and the double line of bare-limbed trees that marched out of sight, to the place where the drive met the road. Hannah was already there, unpacking.
When Porter gestured to a door on the opposite side of the corridor, Tempest hesitated. “Go on, then,” Emily said with a smile. “You must want a moment to yourself. To read your letter.” She nodded toward the crumpled paper Tempest had forgotten she still held in her hand.
“Yes, of course,” Tempest lied and turned to follow the butler’s lead.
Porter opened the door on a chamber somewhat larger than the one that had been given to Mrs. Beauchamp, decorated in a cheery floral motif, with painted sprays of violets, smiling pansies, and bright primroses adorning the papered walls. The frosty air of the room, however, threatened to nip the bloom from those buds. A fire had been lit, but too recently to have driven away the chill and the damp of disuse.
As soon as she was alone, she hurried to the fireplace and sank down beside it—not in one of the curving chairs upholstered with damask roses that framed it so pleasantly, but right on the hearthstone, craving the heat.
She ought never to have come. This cold house, that cold man—there was nothing for her here. The memory of her mother she carried in her face had only served to remind him of his hatred of her dear papa. Twenty years of bitterness had not made him weak and ill, as she had always imagined. They had merely hardened his heart.
Wishing she could crawl past the fire irons and into the flame like a salamander, she drew her knees against her chest instead and heard once more the crinkle of paper as her fingers curled around Edward’s letter. She did not know whether she could bear to read his words, could stomach whatever paltry excuse he would offer for sending her to this terrible place.
To her surprise, the letter was still sealed. Even curiosity did not melt her grandfather’s stern reserve, it seemed. Opposite the seal, Miss Holderin was written
in the same neat hand that filled the account books of Harper’s Hill. Its formality made her hesitate.
But when she had slid her nail under the wafer of wax and unfolded a single sheet dense with ink, the first words to greet her were more familiar:
My dear Tempest—
If this letter has reached you, you are at Crosslands Park and under the care of your grandfather, so I shall pretend an ease I do not yet feel and write as if you are safe at long last. I hope that rascal Corrvan took good care of the precious cargo with which he was entrusted.
I know I cannot expect, perhaps do not deserve, your forgiveness for disregarding your wishes and arranging for you to be taken away. Yet I cannot count myself entirely in the wrong. I did what I believed your blessed father would have wanted done.
Two hot tears spilled over her lashes and spattered the paper, smearing words she had yet to read. Ridiculous, really, to talk of forgiveness. Dear Edward was too honorable ever to do anything that he did not think was best. Of course she would forgive him. Eventually. But forgiveness would not erase her fury. He should certainly expect to feel her anger when he saw her again.
She would not nurse her anger until it made her as cold and unfeeling as her grandfather, however. Dashing unshed tears from her eyes, she returned to the letter.
Believe me, my dearest friend—my more than sister—I could never have borne to send you off if I did not believe the danger here was real, and graver than you seemed capable of imagining. If past experience is any predictor, you will even now be plotting your return to Antigua. I must urge you not to be rash. With you in England, under watchful eyes, Lord Nathaniel will find it impossible to force a marriage, impossible to connive and deprive you of the inheritance that must come into your hands, your gentle hands, and none other’s.
In that way, at least, she was better off than Edward could have hoped. Here she sat in Yorkshire—safe, to be sure, but sound? Little could Edward have imagined how the trip he had laid out would threaten her peace of mind. The warmth of which her oldest friend had deprived her by sending her on this voyage had very little to do with the change in climate.
To Tempt an Heiress Page 20
