Wild Lavender

by Lynne Connolly

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Once, that was all I wanted. That and you.” She spoke quietly, her voice vibrating with longing. Opening her eyes, she said, “Thursday, at eleven.”

  Tom left shortly after. He couldn’t bear to look at her any longer. After Thursday, she would not look at him again. Or she would tell Winterton and he would kill her. He no longer cared.

  Chapter 13

  Julius pressed Helena for answers, but she had not allowed any. Risking everything on her belief, she had calmly done her research and collected what she needed to. When Julius asked her what she was about, she told him and waited for his response.

  “There is only one way out of this pickle now,” she said, “and you know what that is. I will meet Lord Alconbury and discover what he has to tell me.”

  “Risking your reputation even more?” Standing at the window of the breakfast parlor, staring out at the rain-soaked day, Julius had sounded almost resigned. She had not allowed him to tell lies on her behalf. She was sick of them and wanted them done. After she had confronted Tom, her future was clear, and the road had only two forks. She could live with him as his wife or return to her mother and dwindle into the shadows.

  Because the rumors were spreading around London like wildfire. On the Tuesday before her visit to Folgate Street, the journals and gossip-sheets were rife with speculation. The worst had happened, and “someone” had seen her half dressed in the arms of Lord Alconbury in a country inn, just as if they were hiding from notice. Who had spread the rumors, she had no idea.

  “I’m sorry to bring you such disturbance, especially at such a time.” Her dreams of a villa by the Thames had shattered and fallen into dust. If she did that, not only her reputation, but by association, her family’s, would suffer badly. She could no longer consider the prospect of living independently. Not once she had been branded a harlot. Her mother would lose no time dusting her hands and turning her back on her eldest daughter, but Helena knew her siblings and her father would refuse to take that course. A pity, really.

  Everything hinged on her seemingly innocuous visit today. If the footmen, at least not wearing their livery today, thought it odd that Helena used her own key to gain access to the property, they did not comment. Nor did they remark on her eccentric lack of a companion. After all, she was visiting a respectable widow.

  She arrived half an hour early, because she wanted to explore, but she didn’t want Tom to know. Craving the short minutes of solitude, she entered the hallway and softly closed the door. She had never forgotten a moment of their short time here.

  Papers crackled in her pocket. That one word, “consanguinity” had given her the clue. In order for a marriage to be invalidated for that reason, the bride and groom had to be very closely related. Parents, uncles and aunts, siblings and the spouses of siblings. That close. Carefully, Helena had considered each possibility, and just as carefully, collected what evidence she could find. When she had discounted the ridiculous possibilities, only a few remained, and one had made itself clear to her. But she needed to see what he claimed was proof first.

  * * * *

  Helena opened the door of the little house in Folgate Street and was instantly transported back five years. The hallway was not covered with dust, as she’d expected, or changed in any significant way. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of furniture polish, and the slight fustiness that old houses often carried. Carriages rattled by and outside a church clock struck the half-hour. The tiny hall still held a row of coat hooks, a small table by the door and little else. No clock ticked, no servant bumbled about in the kitchen downstairs. But the place was perfectly, eerily clean and free of dust.

  The remnants of that impulsive, happy girl remained here, her laughter captured in the atmosphere, her bright expectations for the future trapped here, like a fly in amber. She had left them here, and here they had remained.

  Gingerly, she opened the door to the downstairs parlor. The furniture was not shrouded under covers, but open and polished. It looked as if someone had left the room only a moment ago. A few prints hung on the walls, the ones of King James and King George side by side, staring at each other. It had amused her to put them there and sent Tom into gales of laughter when he’d seen them. The man she had married.

  She had the assurance of the prison that Clegg was qualified to marry people, and she had a copy of the certificate. What else did they need? Perhaps Tom thought that the new law, enacted two years ago, making such irregular marriages illegal, was enough to annul their marriage, but if he did, he was misinformed. Marriages enacted before the law came into force last year were still valid. The one word, “consanguinity” had given her a clue, and over the last week, when she’d been convalescing and basically hiding from the increasingly vicious rumors flying around town, she’d done some useful research.

  She left the front parlor and went into the one at the back. It was in the same condition as the front. A row of clean glasses stood by the decanter on the sideboard. Was Tom still using this place? She touched the rim of a glass. Had he used it recently? Or had he turned this place into a monument for youthful folly?

  He had torn her heart out of her chest and stamped on it. Now she was about to discover why. Another hour and she might feel completely different. She held on to that notion, clutched it for all she was worth. What would he bring, if anything? Would he come at all?

  Lifting her skirts, Helena climbed the steep, narrow staircase, bypassing the main rooms to climb to the next floor and enter the bedroom where they had spent so many happy hours. Facing it was a kind of dare. If she could do this and feel nothing, perhaps what she felt for him was truly over. Perhaps then she could exorcise the final ghosts and move on. A chair was drawn up to the dressing table, a lacy shawl flung over the back, as if recently discarded. A modest toilet set was laid with military precision on the small glass-covered surface, the brushes at right-angles to the clothes brush at the top, and a silver-backed hand mirror on one side. Unused pots of powders and unguents lay at precise distances from each other, and an empty molded glass pin tray capped the arrangement. It appeared more like a still-life, something an artist would paint, than a real set.

  So she had allayed her other secret fear, that he had used the house for a succession of mistresses. It would be a convenient place for him to keep a woman. The highest sticklers would not abide it, but a more modest woman would find a comfortable home here. However, despite the careful arrangements and the absence of dust, no evidence lay of anyone actually living here. Perhaps the last occupant had moved on, and he’d had the place cleaned out.

  The sounds and scents of their lovemaking were long gone, except in her mind. The bed was re-dressed, with new drapes and covers in a heavenly shade of blue. But here she had lost her heart. More fool she. Evidently, he had moved on.

  As the clock chimed eleven, a key scraped in the lock downstairs, the sound loud in the eerie silence. Turning, panic rising in her breast, Helena ran outside the room, the worn boards creaking under her weight. She didn’t have time to run all the way downstairs, but she would not let him catch her here. This room would remain sacred in her memories, if not in his. She ran down a floor to the main rooms.

  The front parlor here was formally furnished in an old-fashioned style that reminded her of a little-used room in the family seat at Edensor Abbey. It meant little to her, since they had never spent much time there. Here she would close the door on this business. Either she would leave a disgraced woman, or an acknowledged wife. She prepared to fight the battle of her life.

  His tread sounded on the stairs. He didn’t call her name or check the rooms downstairs. He came straight to her. She stood on the far side of the room to the door, a circular table between her and the doorway.

  As always the sight of him made her heart leap, but she was accustomed to that, and she had braced herself for the impact. Two steps into the room, he halted and gazed at her, his eyes hungry, his face calm. He bow
ed formally, cutting her to the bone.

  “We’re not in public now,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do,” he said, straightening. “I owe you much more than that.”

  “How so?” She tilted her head to one side, studying him. He appeared haggard, as if he had not slept, shadows like thumbprints under his eyes. She would not give him pity. He did not deserve it for leaving her heartbroken five years before. But facing him now, remembering all they had said and done, she had to work to recall that terrible moment when her world had collapsed around her.

  “I admire your forbearance and your understanding.” His voice held the slightest quaver, and when he spoke again, he’d pitched the tone deeper, no doubt to cover up any trace of weakness. “What I did to you was unforgivable. But I had made a discovery and I could not share it with you. I could hardly understand it myself at the time.”

  “Why could you not share it with me?”

  “Because it nearly killed me to learn it. How could I do that to you?”

  He sounded almost caring. She curled her lip. “What is so terrible? Why would you break all your promises?”

  He did not answer immediately, but glanced away. Dipping a hand into the pocket of his deep crimson coat, he drew out a paper. So he’d come prepared, too. “Look at this.” Placing two fingers on the paper, he shoved it across the table.

  She stepped close enough to see it. Even touching something that had left his possession so recently made her heart beat a little faster. She was a fool, no doubt about it.

  Someone had crumpled this sheet, but the creases were faint. After she read it through, she read it again. He had given her a statement from his mother that she’d had an affair with the Duke of Kirkburton and he, Tom, was the result.

  Horror swept through her, and then a building sense of triumph, glowing deep in her belly. “So you think you took your sister to bed?” Before she read the document through again, she glanced up at him.

  All the color had leached from his face. He gave a terse nod.

  “Who wrote this?” she asked.

  “My mother.”

  “You’re certain it’s not a forgery?”

  “I know her writing too well for anyone to deceive me.”

  She folded her arms. “Tell me what you know.” Before she showed him what she had, she must hear his story in full and know what she had to contend with.

  “My mother was pregnant before my father bedded her. It’s known that she was courted by both men, Northwich and Kirkburton. Society was abuzz with it at the time. You cannot deny that.”

  She shrugged. “Of course not. It’s one of the reasons our families are at odds. Your father won her.”

  His lips twisted into a wry grin. “In a way. She did not tell him until they were in Rome. He wanted the blessing of his Pope and his king before he bedded her, and it was then that she told him. He made her write that confession, but the King prevailed on him not to deny her or the child.”

  “Of course he did,” she said, her lip curling in a sneer. “I assume when you say ‘the King,’ you are referring to the Old Pretender?”

  He shrugged in his turn. “If you wish to call him that. We won’t fall out over that here.”

  “That seems tolerant from a lifelong Jacobite.”

  He met her gaze coolly. “I was born into it. It is not necessarily where my heart lies.” He stopped and looked away, visibly collecting himself before he came back to her. “The Stuarts have done us no favors. They took all and gave little back. I told you and your brother that.”

  Folding her hands together, gripping them hard, she said, “Go on. Tell me what you know.”

  “You seem remarkably collected for a woman who has just met her brother.”

  “Who has slept with her brother, you mean.” Even saying it aloud did not make her believe it. Putting her hand in her pocket, she touched the fat sheaf of papers resting there. But there was still a possibility that Tom had told her the truth. It depended on the date. “When is your birthday?”

  His dark brows slashed together. “Why is that important?”

  “It’s vital. Tell me.”

  “September the twentieth.”

  “Then you sacrificed our love for nothing. We are truly married.”

  * * * *

  Disbelief hammered its way through Tom. Facing her had been bad enough, but now she refused to believe him? He needed to convince her, or she would never move on. The notion made his heart bleed, but they had to get past this. “You cannot do this, Helena. Your life is worth more than pining for a mistake we made in our youth. Our marriage may have been conducted properly, but we are not married. Siblings cannot marry.”

  “We are not siblings.”

  He was coming to the end of his rope. “Tell me.” The words came out as an order, but he was past politeness. Facing her, telling her the terrible thing they had unwittingly done was bad enough, but her disbelief made his task exponentially more difficult. “We cannot possibly sue for annulment, for that would be to tell everyone our mistake, but we can agree to disregard this mistake and provide the truth, should anyone require it in the future.”

  She flicked away his concern with a delicate brush of her hand. “You were born in September, so the earliest you could have been conceived was December, is it not?”

  He nodded, waiting to see where she would take this.

  She paused to draw a sheaf of papers out of her pocket. Spreading them before her, she sorted through them, and selected a few. A small smile curled her delectable lips. If he had to spend much more time alone in this room with her, he would surely go mad.

  She lifted her head, addressing him coolly. “According to that note and your father’s account, your mother and my father had an affair, which ended with your mother’s pregnancy.”

  He nodded. “Succinct and to the point, but yes.”

  “When your parents married, your father took your mother to Rome.”

  He nodded again, but said nothing this time.

  “When did your parents marry?”

  “In July 1720.”

  “So in order for you to be my father’s son, the affair must have continued after our parents married, since my parents married in August.” She shook her head. “They were at odds, even then. How sad that they did not follow their hearts.”

  “Then you don’t deny that they were lovers?”

  She shrugged, the shoulder of her green gown slipping fractionally. When she turned her head, her silvery hair caught the light from the single window, sending a shaft of sunlight to pierce his heart. “My father certainly loved her, and it is true that he wanted to marry her, but his parents refused to countenance the union and arranged the marriage with my mother. They did not have the courage to defy their parents.” She turned a face as hard as marble to him, asking the question without words.

  “Yes,” he said, in answer. “Yes, if we were married in truth, I would have done anything to keep you, defied anyone. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Her delicately arched brows, several shades darker than her hair, rose. “Yes, I did need to hear that. To continue.” She glanced at one of the papers she’d spread on the table. It was a letter of some kind, but he could not read it from the other side of the table. “You obviously know that my father took my mother abroad. He wished to present her at Versailles. First they sailed to Italy and visited the centers of classical culture. Your parents were in Rome for a different reason.”

  “My parents did not return to England until March the following year. Yours returned in time for the Season the year after that, with their son.”

  “After my grandmother died, the King persuaded him to claim the title and to rebuild his fortune. He said my father would be of more use if he were not attainted, and he provided a firm base in England. Reluctantly, my parents returned.”

  She had found some loophole that appeared to explain he
was not there. But his mother would not have lied to his father about such an important matter. Her father adored her, and that admission had nearly driven him to leave her or at the least disown his son. If it were not that the King had ordered him to keep both wife and child, he might have left her in Rome.

  Helena seemed at her coolest, the mask of elegant calm firmly in place. She gave a sharp businesslike nod and then put her fingers on two of the papers and pushed them over to him in a mirror of his earlier gesture. As if in a dream, he picked them up and glanced at them. A letter and a receipt. He returned his attention to her.

  Helena allowed herself a grin, although he had no idea what she had to smile about. Perhaps it was relief that at last they were facing reality. “Do you remember what else happened in 1720?”

  He would play along with her. If she needed to recite events from the year in question to put the circumstances into context, so be it. “Many things. The most notable is probably the South Sea Bubble.” His father had lost no money in the crash of the stocks, because he had no money to invest, but the scandal had cost many people dearly. The South Sea Company had purchased the national debt, so when the company collapsed, the country had nearly followed suit.

  “Exactly. Do you remember the timing?”

  He frowned. Surely they had dealt with that sideline. “The company collapsed in the autumn of 1720.”

  “Exactly. Because of that, my parents never set foot on the Continent in that year, or the year after, for that matter. That was a ruse.”

  Wait, what had she said? His heart jolted. He forced his control back to what it should be, but the papers he held trembled.