Wild Lavender

by Lynne Connolly

  “Be ready, my love, because we are committed now.” He glanced back at the bed. “We may not see this place again for some time.”

  “But we will keep it?”

  He kissed her. “Forever. This is where everything started.”

  Chapter 8

  Helena’s heart beat uncomfortably as she gained access to her parents’ house, but nobody took much notice of her entrance. They had accepted her story, it seemed. That story was her greatest risk and would continue so until the end of the week.

  Up in her room, she ordered a change of clothes and then set to composing the letter from Mary. Pleased to note her old skill came back to her, she penned a letter pleading for Helena’s attendance in Devonshire. She added a caveat, saying the local aristocrat was holding a ball and asking her to request her mother’s attendance.

  To her shock, her mother agreed with little demur. “Sir George will be here when you return,” she said. “A little waiting will do him good.”

  Did Sir George need to be brought up to the mark? But Helena felt safe from him now. They could never marry, because she was already married.

  How long before she could call herself Lady Alconbury? Would she ever use that name?

  Not that she cared overmuch, because she had the man inside the grand titles and fine clothes. Tom—she had him. She had never asked him why he didn’t use his first name, Charles. She liked that he had two names. Tom seemed a much more private individual, the man deep inside all the wrappings, and only she had him.

  She could not even begin to imagine her father’s reaction if she told him she’d married the son of his bitterest enemy. Julius she could never tell. His personal animosity to the Dankworths exceeded even his father’s.

  Events spun out of control after that. Sharman commenced packing. Helena did not intend to keep her long. Certainly not to accompany her far on her journey.

  Her parents were complacent and her brother far too busy coping with his own problems to concern himself too much with Helena’s sudden journey. He only commented that the notion was a good one, and he would try to stop their mother continuing with her matrimonial plans, since Sir George was obviously not the man for her.

  Standing in the hall of the house she might not see for a long time, facing her beloved brother, Helena was overcome with emotion. She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him close, ignoring his protests about his lace and his new waistcoat.

  Laughing, he gave in and hugged her back. “You’re a goose, but I love you.”

  She loved him too, but the words reminded her of the last time she said them, and how soon it would be before she said them again.

  Tom would meet her on the road and take her to his yacht on the coast. Then they would become Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, a gentleman and his wife, spending time abroad to develop his business. The stories they had concocted lying in bed came to life, and what had begun with laughter and lovemaking was becoming all too real.

  Julius helped her into the crested coach that was to take her to Devonshire. She had two footmen, two drivers, a maid, and an older lady who was to ensure Helena did not speak to anyone she did not want to, and that the unworthy didn’t approach her. She had been terrified that Augustus would offer to escort her, but that fear passed and she was embarking on what her mother regarded as a perilous adventure. “We should add more outriders.” There were already two.

  Helena assured her she would be completely safe. She had begun to wonder how she could get her luggage away, but if she did not, so be it. She would order one of the footmen Tom brought with him to do it.

  She set off, listening to the chatter of her maid, nodding at regular intervals, but letting her mind drift elsewhere. They changed horses, and then they stopped to eat, and then set off again.

  Eventually night fell and they stopped for the night. Tom would collect her here. Excitement built inside her.

  * * * *

  Tom tore through the preparations for his elopement. He longed to claim Helena, to take her to the snug little property in the Languedoc, which he had bought on impulse three years ago and neglected to inform his family about. How fortunate that was, almost as if he were planning for a future he had not envisioned then. He adored Helena. No matter who her family was. He was not marrying them, he was marrying her. No, he had married her.

  He could not feel anything but pure delight that he’d claimed her, although occasionally he wondered what devil had entered him that he had suggested the scheme to her. In the privacy of his chambers he admitted to himself that panic had pushed him forward. That, and a powerful need to possess her, to prevent anyone else from taking her from him. Her parents could have her married in a trice, but not if she was married already.

  He told his father that now the prince had gone, he would leave for the country. “I will visit an old friend and then come up to the house in time to meet our guests.” As usual, his father had arranged a large house party to fill their sprawling country house for Christmas and the new year. His grandmother was engaged in the arrangements, leaving Tom free to make his own more secretive plans. He wanted nothing to trouble her, once he had his wife in his keeping.

  The day before his departure his father demanded his presence in the study.

  His father was pacing the floor, never a good sign. He tossed a note at Tom. “What is the meaning of this?” His voice rose to a bellow.

  Tom did not flinch. He had put up with his father’s ill moods too many times to allow the bluster to concern him now. Probably a bill or some scheme of his brothers.

  He opened the paper and froze. The handwriting was Helena’s.

  “I hear and obey,” she said, in unmistakable reference to the marriage ceremony. “I will hold my breath until we meet again.”

  She had not signed it, of course. He could pass it off as a note from a mistress. His father would know no better.

  “Well, boy?”

  His father never called him “boy” these days, ever since Tom had proved to him that he was a man. The first time he had beaten his father in a sword fight, just after Culloden, his father had given in. In those days they had practiced regularly, in preparation for the Stuarts’ arrival.

  Something had passed from father to son with that event, and ever since, the duke had not called him a child. What had happened to make him use the name now? Tom detested it, and his father knew as much.

  “I fail to see what has disturbed you in this note.” He managed a sneer. “A letter from a mistress should not disturb you so much, Papa.”

  “A mistress? Is that what she is?” The duke’s face tensed, his already spare features gaining the aspect of a corpse. “Tell me you have not taken that step!”

  “Why?”

  The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know who she is?”

  What was he supposed to say to that? Tom tried a shrug.

  His father gave a “Pah!” Of exasperation. He strode to his desk, the fashionably full skirts of his coat whirling. “I had thought you less foolish. Look at this!”

  Seizing another piece of paper, he gave it to Tom. “Compare them.”

  Tom held a letter, a chatty missive, one woman to another. He recognized the writing immediately. “Where did you get this from?”

  “Does it matter? I have a collection of them. Know thine enemy is a good legend to live by. You know I do my best to comply with that. Would it be so strange that I would recognize the writing?”

  Unfortunately, in neither letter had Helena used the schoolroom formal copperplate everyone was taught. The handwriting she used in her more informal moments was far more distinctive, backward-slanting, with circles over the I’s instead of dots. She had not needed to sign the note she’d sent to Tom, the note he had not seen until this moment. The writing proclaimed the writer.

  “You opened my private correspondence?” Tom demanded. “You dared to do that?”

  His father shrugged. “It arrived with a number
of other things. I opened it because I thought it was for me. But I have not had a mistress for some time, and if I did, I would not look in that direction.” He passed his hand over his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if a headache was forming there. “What are you thinking of, to imagine that Helena Vernon would want you?”

  “She does,” he said without thinking, desperate to deny their attraction to each other.

  “It is not possible.”

  “Why?” Tom demanded. “What is this rivalry? We no longer expect the Stuarts to accede, do we? He was courting us this time. That was what the prince’s visit meant. He will do what we command, as long as we continue to support him. So what quarrel do we have left with the Emperors?”

  “The Vernons,” his father corrected him. “The rest of the clan can go hang as far as I’m concerned. The Vernons are different. But first, tell me, please. Is this a plan of some kind? Do you think to embarrass them in some way?” Eagerness sharpened his features.

  Tom shook his head. “I would rather reconcile with them. We need to progress, Father, and for that, we need neutrality. If we cannot reconcile, toleration would work better. We have more in common with the Vernons than we have differences.”

  In business and in the management of the country they had much in common. They were loyal to Britain, but in different ways. Could he make his father understand? Guilt bore down hard on him when he realized how much he would hurt his father. But what else could he do?

  His father paced again, passing before the window and back twice before he spoke again. “You cannot become involved with her under any circumstances. Even if we reconcile, if we eat at the same table, we cannot grow any closer.”

  He favored his son with a sharp stare. “It is time you knew. I had hoped to spare you this, but there is no hiding the truth now.”

  He waited until his father spoke again.

  “Do you remember what your mother and I did after our wedding?”

  Tom nodded. “You went to visit King James in Rome and pledge your allegiance.”

  “Do you know why we stayed so long?”

  The answer to that seemed self-evident. Tom shrugged.

  “Because the child your mother was expecting was not mine.”

  Shock rocked Tom. He’d been born in Rome, his parents’ first child. He spread his legs, making his stance firmer, in case he staggered. Light-headedness threatened to fell him, but he refused to give into it.

  Flinging his hand out, he found purchase on the sideboard that stood by the window. That was the only sign of weakness he would allow. His vision cleared and he met his father’s gaze. “Explain.”

  The duke nodded. “Your mother had an affair, and her family were keen to hush the matter up. The father of the child refused to acknowledge it. We were not in a position to argue. In 1720 we were barely holding on to the dukedom.”

  Tom was not surprised at that. It had been that way for most of the century.

  His father paced and then turned to face Tom. Tom studied him with new eyes. If his father was telling the truth, he could see cracks of light in the problem. Surely if his father could prove his allegations, he could disinherit him? Or could he? His grasp of the finer legal matters was not strong in this case, but why should it be? He had never had cause to question it before.

  Tom had assumed the family resemblance, but they did have differences. He was dark, like his father—his father?—with the same olive-toned complexion, but that covered differences in eye color, shape, and the shape of the face and mouth.

  He was already assuming the duke was telling the truth. He jerked his chin. “Carry on.”

  The duke crossed to the massive desk and unlocked a drawer, pulling out a few papers. He lifted his gaze. All Tom saw in his father’s expression was unutterable sadness. “I wanted the consummation to be special and precious, so I elected to wait until Rome, until after we had the Pope’s blessing, and then the King’s. Once she had recovered from her travel sickness, I planned—” He waved in dismissal. “It matters little now. We were in Rome for a month before we saw the Pope, but that night, I went to her. I was young, in love, and I could not wait any longer to claim my bride. It was then that she told me she was expecting.”

  Tom’s shock was reflected in Northwich’s eyes as he shared his misery. But he remained on his guard. He would not allow anything until he knew more. Had his mother lied? A child could be a month early, or even late, and still be accepted.

  “I had to think of the title and the future,” he said. “I left Rome. I ordered it given out that I was on a mission for the King, and it is true. He found work for me so I did not have to face my bride, her body swelling with a child that was not mine.”

  “Without…?”

  The duke nodded. “Without consummation.” So coldly put, but what a terrible decision to make!

  With his newfound love came new understanding. He could accept that his father took his mother back, even after her betrayal. Perhaps he was not the child. Some alteration of dates? “But you loved my mother.”

  “I could do nothing else but love her. The original plan was for her to bear the child, and then we would find someone to foster it. I could not accept a child not of my get for my heir.”

  “Did the child die? Did you father another?” He was grasping at straws now.

  His father met his gaze head on. He shook his head and that small gesture made all Tom’s wild suppositions die. “The King persuaded me to change my mind.” He was not speaking of the King at St. James’s Palace. He meant James III, who was then, as now, in residence in Rome. “After the child was born, he called me to his presence. He begged me to take the baby and acknowledge it as my own. Society in Rome knew your mother was pregnant, and so if we returned without a child, gossip would ensue. Rome was as full of Englishmen on the Grand Tour as it is now, and although we did our best to conceal her condition, we were unsuccessful. Moreover, your mother was heartbroken at the notion of leaving the child behind.”

  He paused and pushed two pieces of paper across the desk. “And he paid me.”

  Those words dropped like poison into Tom’s heart. He stepped forward and read the first paper. It was a receipt for the payment of a staggering sum of money into the Northwich account. Although the donor was unnamed, the dates were exactly right. They coincided with a week after his birth date.

  The second paper was in his mother’s hand, likewise signed and dated.

  “I hereby declare that the baby I bore a week ago was not fathered by my husband, the third Duke of Northwich, but by James, the fifth Duke of Kirkburton. The child is his get. I swear I will discuss the matter with no one, not even the boy I bore.”

  Tom read the short statement over again.

  “I have several copies,” his father said. “They are all accounted for. You may take that one, if you wish. The Kirkburtons were in Rome at the time on their own bride-trip. I did not see them, but plenty did. Including your mother.”

  “Why would you do this?” Tom said. He crumpled the paper in his fist, the implications pounding in the beat of his heart and the throb of the pulse in his temples. Forcing himself to retain his senses was the worst thing he had ever done.

  “Because I loved your mother, and she loved you. And because I had an heir. You.” He glanced away. “Before you were born, I had not fathered any other child. I was an enthusiastic lover to the mistresses I’d had, and I had begun to believe I was incapable.”

  “You were but twenty!”

  “I had my first mistress at fourteen.” His father bit out the words. “However, your mother proved me wrong. William, Edward, Chloe, and Emilia are undoubtedly mine. But by then the damage was done. You were my acknowledged son, and the Earl of Alconbury. All I could do was bring you up as mine and teach you well.”

  He could take no more. His face twisting in agony, Tom strode from the room.

  In his chamber, he gave up the contents of his
stomach.

  Nothing mattered any more. He could not think or move without hurting. He refused to believe the calumny. How could what his mother had written be true? He could believe that his grandfather would snatch a woman from under the nose of his greatest rival and political enemy, but marry her off to his son?

  His grandfather had died while his parents were still abroad. His death and the duties of the title had brought his father—the new Duke of Northwich—home with his bride. And the baby they claimed was their son.

  He was the biological son of the Duke of Kirkburton.

  He had made love with his sister.

  The knowledge pounded through him, forcing him to face the horror of what they had done. If—if his father was telling the truth. He could not, surely. But that letter was undoubtedly from his mother. He’d know her writing anywhere. She taught him to read.

  He could not tell Helena. The knowledge would destroy her. Rather than that, he’d let her believe she was the victim of a cruel trick. That would keep her away. He spent an hour composing the shortest, most terse message he had ever sent, ripping his heart out in the process.

  He could not stay here, not with this hanging around his neck.

  The notion of escaping seized him by the bollocks. Within ten minutes he’d shoved enough items into a bag to cope for a while. He paused in the middle of his room.

  And his mother. His mother had confessed to his parentage. He stuffed the crumpled ball that was her letter into the bag with the rest.

  Tom left the house without looking back.

  * * * *

  The landlord of the inn handed Helena a note.

  “Dear Helena,” it read.

  “I have a confession to make. Our elopement was a scheme concocted by my father and myself. We meant to shame you and bring your name into disgrace. However on consideration I no longer wish to continue with the plan. I will not mention our recent affair and I will say nothing to bring your name into disfavor. I advise you to continue your journey to your friend’s house, as you planned. I will not mention the affair or the sham marriage, as long as you do not do so.