“No, child, I buried the truth.”
“And I shall unearth it, Father. If that is what you wish me to do, I shall unearth it.”
“And when you do unearth the truth, child, you see that you act upon it. You do something with it; do not just let it lay there and continue to rot as it has done all these years. There is some good to be done with it, and it is only now that I realise that my very youngest child, of all my children, is the only one with the strength and heart to do what must be done.”
In the days after her father had died, Cordelia had re-run their last conversation over and over in her mind. She had never imagined for a moment that she would feel quite so grief-stricken at his loss, given that he had hardly noticed her in life. And yet, it weighed so heavily upon her heart that she could barely think of his face without crying.
As Cornelius Cunningham had quite rightly predicted, the two of them never did resume their conversation. In the short time after they had spoken, the old Duke had truly been too ill to even speak and, just two days later, had died.
Cordelia could not help looking for comfort from her family, and yet, despite their great loss, they could provide her with none. Prudence Cunningham, the Duchess and the one woman on earth who should have mourned him as though her heart was torn in two, seemed very much as ever she was. Not even her appetite had been disrupted by the passing of her own husband.
Eleonora had simply continued to follow her mother wherever she went, giving no more sign of distress than Prudence herself. Rather, she simply seemed concerned to maintain her mother’s approval, as she always did.
Cordelia, as she silently studied them, rather wondered if her mother and sister had not been the greatest causes of disharmony and discontent within the Cunningham family. They were both so very scheming and so very displeased with everyone and everything in life. They were truly two of the bitterest women she had ever met, and she rather wondered if she would truly shed a tear if either of them passed from her view and into the afterlife.
Of her brothers, Cordelia could only feel a little for Richard. He had tried to comfort his father in those last days, but Cordelia could not help thinking it was, as ever, with the hope of gaining the old Duke’s approval.
In truth, Richard had been far more devastated by the loss of their father than Cordelia would ever have given him credit for. Cordelia had rather expected him to immediately charge into his role as the new Duke of Horndean, with a grim set to his face and a heart full of seething determination to continue his father’s work and wreak havoc upon the Farrington family wherever he could. And yet, Cordelia could see nothing of it.
She rather wondered if that was yet to come; something that would begin to fester the very moment that the grief began to wane. She could hardly think of it, for with such thoughts came the fear that nothing would ever change.
It was on the fifth day after the passing of her father that Cordelia had spied Philip Farrington risking his very existence on their land. She had spied him in the early morning as she had looked out of her bedroom window at the bright summer sky at her favourite hour of seven o’clock. When first she saw him, Cordelia gasped.
Still, she had heard nothing that the rest of her family were yet awake, or rather none of them had risen. At least that would be something in Philip’s favour. However, she did not think that she could go out to him for fear that someone would see him there and take some action against him.
As she watched, her mouth open, Cordelia could see that he had taken a little cover at the side of the stables. He was clearly looking out for her, his eyes scanning the many great windows of the enormous Horndean Hall.
Raising the sash window as quietly as she could, Cordelia popped her head out into the cool and bright morning air. Turning her head this way and that for any sign of a witness, she finally decided that it was safe to attempt to gain Philip Farrington’s attention.
Silently, Cordelia waved her arms furiously until Philip stared up at her and waved back.
Cordelia knew that they could not simply meet upon her own land, and she would have to at least make her way out of the estate. In the end, she pointed furiously towards the cover of the dense woods on the east side of the Horndean grounds. Nodding his understanding, Philip Farrington immediately set off in that direction. Seeing him finally disappear into the safety of cover, Cordelia breathed a great sigh of relief and hurriedly got herself ready to go out before anybody else was awake.
Chapter Four
“My dear Lady Cunningham, how are you?” Philip turned and raced towards her the moment he heard her footfalls on the well-trodden path of the wood.
“Oh Philip, how glad I am to see you,” Cordelia said, no longer keen to speak to him through the awkward shroud of titles and formality. “I have missed you so much and have longed for some comfort.” Throwing herself into his arms, Cordelia placed her own about his neck and held fast to him.
“Oh, Cordelia, how very sorry I am. When I heard of your father’s passing, I truly felt sick. I could not imagine how you were coping here nor if you had found any comfort at all. Tell me, how have you done?”
“There is so much to tell you, Philip; I hardly know where to start,” she said and slowly released him from her tight grip.
With his arm still around her, Philip guided her deeper into the wood so that they would not be seen by anyone who happened to pass through. After just a moment or two, he found them somewhere suitable to sit and gently helped her down.
“Just tell me it all, Cordelia. I have all the time in the world, and I am not going anywhere.”
“Well, it has been just dreadful. I had no idea that I would feel so very grief stricken at the passing of my father. In truth, we had never been close. Well, not until those final days. Oh, Philip, none but Richard and I went to see him in his sick bed, and none at all was with him at the end. Oh, what a family I am a part of. And how I wish I were not.”
“At least you were there for him when he needed you, Cordelia. However dreadful the behaviour of your family, at least know that you were not a part of it. Despite your father’s dismissive treatment of you over the years, you did not forsake him at the end, and that is truly important.”
“If you can believe it, Philip, we became as close as it is possible for a father and daughter to be in those last hours. He was truly sorry that we had not enjoyed a far closer relationship these twenty years, and he did not balk at mentioning it. He simply told the truth and asked for my forgiveness.”
“My dear Cordelia, how very difficult for you. How very heartbreaking.” As they sat side-by-side on the trunk of a fallen tree, Philip laid his arm about her shoulders and pulled her in towards him.
In truth, he would not have felt so bold had she not been so stricken. They had met not half a dozen times before that moment and, despite the fact they had grown ever closer and had done so extremely quickly, still he had a certain nervousness in touching her. Always he had a fear that she would recoil.
And yet, as he watched her in her grief, he could not help holding her. He did not find the risk of rejection any risk at all if only he could provide a moment’s comfort for the woman he was falling in love with.
“It was heartbreaking, Philip, but really also rather lovely. My father and I spoke as we never have done before, nor ever would have done had he not been dying and I had been there. Oh Philip, he had so many regrets in the end.”
“But surely, with your forgiveness, he was able to make his journey much more easily.” Philip pulled her ever closer to him.
“In truth, I believe he had come to terms with all that lacked in the relationship between us. I speak more specifically of your own family when I talk of his regrets.”
“My own family? Surely you do not mean the feud?”
“That is exactly what I mean, Philip.”
“Your father spoke most specifically of the feud between your family and mine as a regret?” As Philip spoke, he felt a curious hope. Almost as if
the bending of the old Duke’s iron will might well have some bearing on the will of his own family in the future. The hope he felt, of course, was in safely being able to one day take the beautiful creature currently in his embrace as his wife.
“He did just that, Philip. He said that when your father had come to him in all his anger, he had retaliated when he should not have. There was an explanation to be made, I believe, but my father in his youth and pride had not seen fit to give it. Instead, he had simply locked horns with your father and the two had continued without any hope of reconciliation.”
“And did he say what that explanation was?”
“No, he did not. Or rather, he could not. At that moment, my father was seized by a dreadful fit of coughing, and I could not press him any further than I had done already.”
“And so you do not know exactly what he meant by it all?” Philip said, feeling suddenly that he had lost something, although he did not quite know what it was. Nonetheless, he felt the loss rather keenly.
“He did not tell me in words. But rather he gave me the means by which to discover the truth for myself.”
“How so, Cordelia?”
“My father told me the whereabouts of some long-ago written diaries of his very own. They are locked away in a secure box in a corner of one of our vast attics. There is a key buried in our family graveyard, and he has given me its precise location. In his own words, my father left me the one inheritance worth having and that, Philip, was the truth.”
“Good heavens, what an emotional time of it you have had, Cordelia. In truth, it is a wonder you are still upright. What a very strong young lady you are and how very proud your father must truly have been of you.”
“Your words are so kind, Philip, and your actions yet kinder still. As sad as I am, I cannot believe my happiness at knowing you. Simply knowing that you are out there in the world, a man who thinks very much as I do with a heart as strong as his wit. You are a true comfort.”
“And I have felt myself blessed every day from our first meeting to have stumbled across you when I did. Had it not been for that day, you and I might have been doomed to simply watch each other with suspicion and from afar once or twice a year at some dreadful society event or other.” Richard gave a light laugh in the hope of providing her with at least a moment’s respite from her cares.
“And I have never felt so blessed to have hurt myself in all my days.” Cordelia did laugh, and it gave him a moment of the purest joy. Surely they were of entirely sympathetic dispositions and more suited than any two people on earth to spend the rest of their lives together.
“So, tell me, Cordelia, what did you find in your father’s diaries? Of course, if I am prying, do tell me. I should not wish to press you on the matter.”
“I have nothing to tell you, Philip, but only because I have yet to search for the diaries. I must first dig up the key, and then, once it is in my grasp, I shall make my way up into the attics on the east wing of Horndean Hall.”
“How far have you to dig?” Philip said, somewhat concerned.
“It is only a few inches below the earth, Philip; you need not worry about me.”
“If I care to worry about you, Cordelia, you ought really just to let me,” Philip said, turning so that he might put both of his arms around her and embrace her fully. “For I think I have never met a person more worth my worry and care than you.”
“I am crying again, Philip, but at least these are tears of happiness. For the first time in days, there is some good in my world.”
“And perhaps you will find something in your father’s diaries which would lead you to find even more good,” Philip said hopefully.
“I see that already you are thinking as I am. You are thinking that there might be some way to put an end to all of this misery.”
“In truth, I am thinking that very thing. Goodness knows how far away from the reality of it we are, but surely it is a thing to hope for; a thing to search for in earnest.”
“Then you will help me in my search, Philip?” she said, looking at him with her large pale green-blue eyes, fixing him to the spot with their very intensity.
“I should help you in anything, Cordelia. But tell me, how am I to assist in your search when I cannot feasibly enter your family’s land, much less their attics?”
“Oh no,” Cordelia said and laughed a little. “You need not come and physically help me search for the diaries themselves. I have no doubt at all that they shall be exactly where my father told me he had left them. No, that is not how you can help me in my search.”
“Then how, my dear Cordelia?”
“Be with me when I read them. I am rather afraid of what I shall find in their pages and should not like to set about them on my own.”
“Of course I shall read them with you. We shall meet every morning if you wish it, down by the stream or here in the woods. Wherever is easier for you to come, then I shall be there. I shall meet you every day and be with you for as long as you wish it.”
“Oh Philip, I knew you would. I knew you would come on this journey with me.” She flung herself at him once more. “Even though I have known you but a short space of time, already I feel as if I can trust you more than anybody else on earth. Do you think that strange?”
“In the light of how strongly I have come to regard you, Cordelia, in an equally short space of time, I do not think it strange at all.”
“Then we shall start tomorrow, Philip. My family still keep to their beds in the early morning, and I should find no more difficulty in getting out of the estate than I do on any other day. And so, I shall meet you down by the stream. I should like to be far away from Horndean Hall when you and I sit side-by-side and read those books together.”
“Then I shall be there from first light, Cordelia. I shall be there waiting for you and ready whenever you appear.”
“I cannot thank you enough, Philip,” Cordelia said, beginning to rise to her feet.
“You need not thank me, for I rather think that the reading of these diaries might be for the good of us all.”
“I hope so with all my heart, Philip, really I do.” Cordelia raised herself up on tiptoes and rather suddenly planted a kiss on his cheek. “But I really must head back into Horndean now, for my family will be stirring, and I do not want to do anything to raise their suspicions, even though they rarely pay much heed to my everyday life.”
“No indeed, I shall walk you back through the wood and leave you at its very edge,” Philip said, and, at the moment that they began to walk, he found himself suddenly seized by great passion.
Reaching out to take her hand, he turned her and pulled her back towards him. Cordelia’s eyes opened wide, but with surprise rather than fear, and she stood without any sign of rejection as he reached out and cupped her small and beautiful face in his large, tanned hands.
When they finally kissed, it was with instant and equal passion on both sides. As tightly as Philip held Cordelia, she returned his embrace measure for measure. And, as deeply as he kissed her, she accepted his kisses with longing and a silent insistence that he kiss her ever deeper still.
By the time they had finished kissing and Philip began to walk her back through the wood, he wondered that he was ever able to stop for a moment.
As Philip watched her darting lightly back across the great lawns of Horndean towards the hall, he could not help hoping that whatever the truth was, they would stumble upon it in those diaries as soon as possible.
He knew that the only thing currently holding his brothers back from sinking their own entrance to the copper mine that the Cunninghams had been planning for so long was, in fact, the death of the old Duke. The Farrington brothers had held back out of respect for a family in grief, albeit they were a family made up of their very deepest enemies. But Philip knew as sure as day turns into night that that period of grace would not last forever. Sooner or later, the Farrington brothers would sink the mine just as they had planned and would claim the rights t
o it, plunging the two families into an ever-deepening hatred.
Chapter Five
As Cordelia began to make her way across the fields and down to the stream to meet Philip, she felt herself growing ever more excited. It was not simply the fact that she was due to be meeting with the young man who had almost entirely filled her thoughts almost since the day she had met him, but also the little diary she carried in a small bag which she had laid upon the front of her horse’s saddle.
Cordelia had found the key easily enough in the family graveyard, although the earth in that particular spot had been extremely hard to break through. She could almost imagine that her father, upon every visit to the graveyard, had surreptitiously stamped the earth down further still with a foot just to ensure that the little key, the keeper of his innermost thoughts, remained safe.
From the very moment she had found it, Cordelia had hidden the key beneath a loose floorboard in her very own chamber. Quite why she felt it necessary to hide it, Cordelia was not entirely sure. In truth, there was none in her family whom she particularly trusted and rather thought that she trusted her mother least of all.
Cordelia did not want anyone of her family to read her father’s diaries before she had had a chance to devour their contents in their entirety. She knew she must keep their existence a secret until the very end.
When she had finally arrived at the meeting place, Cordelia slowly walked her horse all the way down to the stream, and her heart leaped to see Philip already there, sitting on a great rock by the water’s edge and staring out a little vaguely.
He had not heard her approach, and Cordelia took a moment to stare at his handsome form. The silvery streaks in his fashion hair twinkled in the early morning sunlight, and his entire countenance was one of complete peace.
“I do not like to interrupt you when you seem to be very peaceful,” Cordelia said and laughed a little when she saw him jump.
“In truth, I think I was still a little asleep.” He laughed also.
Regency Romance Collection: Regency Fire: The Historical Regency Romance Complete Series (Books 1-5) Page 28
