“It’s not James, Grandmother. It’s me.” Jason walked to the old woman whose eyes still shone brightly with both intelligence and malice.
She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. “Jason—You’re not James pretending to be Jason, are you? I haven’t lost my final wit, have I? Is it really you?”
“Yes, it is.” He strode quickly to her because she looked to be weaving a bit with shock. He took her very gently into his arms, realized she was even more frail than Hollis. Her old bones felt as if they could easily snap in a strong wind. He felt her dry seamed mouth kiss his neck, then he drew back, and looked down into his grandmother’s face, lines scored around her mouth, downward, naturally, since she was always berating everyone around her, never smiling. To his immense pleasure, that seamed old mouth parted in a smile. She kept smiling as she patted his face. “My beautiful Jason,” she said, and she kissed his neck again. Her look was suddenly searching as she said in the gentlest voice he’d ever heard from her in his life, “You’ve forgiven yourself, boy?”
He looked down at that cantankerous old face, and instead of vinegar all he saw was a wealth of concern and love, and it was for him. He couldn’t take it in, no more than he could begin to explain why he’d wanted to stop here first, to see her. He’d received two letters from her a year, one near his birthday and one near Christmas.
“You told your father and your brother not to come see you,” she said, still patting his cheek. “And then you wrote only niggardly excuses for letters for a very long time.”
“I wasn’t ready.”
“Answer me, Jason. Have you forgiven yourself?”
“Forgiven myself?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. For some reason no one can fathom, except for James, who claimed he understood even as he knew you were dead wrong, you blamed yourself for what happened. It’s nonsense, of course. It’s probably an excuse for immense self-pity since you’re a man, and the good Lord knows that men love to wallow in self-pity, lap it up like cats do milk. Do it so that the women who have the misfortune to love them will spend endless amounts of time to reassure them and to stroke their brows—”
“—and pour tea down their gullets and overlook their indiscretions,” Hollis said. “I believe I’ve learned the litany.”
“Ha! You are a great deal too smart, Hollis,” the old woman said, and tried to hit him with her cane.
Now this was more like the grandmother Jason remembered. He gave her a huge grin. “Do you have any brandy to pour down my gullet, Grandmother?”
“Yes, but I daresay you’d rather have one of my nutty buns. You were riding by, weren’t you, and you smelled them wafting out the window, although the windows are supposed to be shut tight to keep out the noxious vapors.”
“Actually,” Jason said, “I didn’t smell the nutty buns. I haven’t smelled a nutty bun in five years. I came because I wanted to see you. Er, may I have a nutty bun now that I’m here and the nutty buns are here as well?”
She actually took several moments to weigh this—he could see it in her bright old eyes.
She yelled, “Hollis, you old stick, bring the nutty buns to the drawing room! Yes, my boy, I’ve decided that if there are at least a half-dozen, then yes, you may have one too. Hollis, your bony old self was just here. Where have you gone now? Are you doddering somewhere? Trying to stuff a nutty bun down your gullet? I’ll wager you are since you think I’ll not say anything since my precious boy is finally home.” Her grin was bright with spite as she spoke.
The grin fell away as she looked back up at Jason. “So you don’t wish to answer me, do you? That’s all right for now. Perhaps it’s too soon for you to realize what’s in your heart.”
Hollis, who had just entered the hall carrying the brandy, was having trouble believing his eyes. His mistress was treating Jason with more affection than she’d ever treated anyone in her entire life. He’d heard what she’d said, and was outraged. “You will allow Master Jason to eat one of your nutty buns, madam? You have never before offered me a nutty bun.”
The dowager countess looked him up and down. “I have always counted the nutty buns you bring me, knowing that it’s always supposed to be half a dozen, but there rarely are. I know you many times filch one for yourself. Don’t try to deny it, Hollis.” The old lady finally nodded, a curl of silver hair falling over her forehead. “Very well, Hollis, I will not berate you today. Look at your face—it’s begun to look like a starving monk’s, more than you did just last week when you deigned to come visit me with one nutty bun missing from that lovely covered plate. Hmm. You may also have a nutty bun, but get them now or I will rescind my offer.” The old woman released Jason, tapped her cane a couple of times, a prelude, Jason thought, to her tottering off to the drawing room.
Jason watched Hollis, stately and tall, those old shoulders as square as they’d been when Jason had left, walk down the hallway into the nether regions of the house to get the nutty buns. He heard him muttering how miracles did happen, that it appeared he would have one of the dowager’s nutty buns before he croaked it. Jason wondered if Hollis realized that two maids were hovering just beyond the staircase, ready for any assistance should he require it, asked or unasked for.
Jason said grandly, “Grandmother, may I offer you my arm?”
“Certainly, my boy. It has to be better than hanging on to Hollis. That old man is as weedy as a dormouse.”
CHAPTER 3
Northcliffe Hall
Silence hung heavy in the drawing room that evening. Tension swirled in the air, thick with bone-deep concern, unspoken worries, and unasked questions. Then Corrie appeared in the doorway carrying a freshly scrubbed twin under each arm, their beautiful small faces alight with excitement and shock because it was so very late and they weren’t in their beds, Nanny snoring not six feet away from them.
“Uncle Jason, it’s us again!” Douglas Simon Sherbrooke, older than his twin by exactly eleven minutes, broke free of his mother and ran as fast as his legs could carry him to Jason, who caught the little boy when he leapt into the air in his general direction.
“I see that it is,” Jason said, nuzzling Douglas’s neck. He smelled just like Alice Wyndham, after her evening bath. He felt tears well up. He looked down to see Everett Plessante Sherbrooke tugging at his trouser leg, ready to yell or burst into tears, Jason couldn’t tell which. He scooped up the little boy and held both of them close, letting them pat his face, give him wet kisses and talk nonstop, words that weren’t really words but rather twin-talk bursting out of those small mouths, just like the incomprehensible language he and James had shared.
Douglas drew back and said, “Everyone said you looked just like Papa and Aunt Melissande, but you don’t, Uncle Jason.”
“That’s true, Douglas. I don’t look exactly like your papa, but it’s close, don’t you think, Everett?”
The other impossibly beautiful little face scrunched up in thought. Everett then announced, “No, Uncle Jason, you look like yourself, and you look like me too. Not Douglas—he looks like Papa. Yes, that’s it, you look like me.” And that little face wore the same wicked look Jason had seen on his mother Corrie’s face.
Douglas said, after another wet kiss on the right side of his uncle Jason’s neck, “Grandpapa can’t stand that I look like Papa and Aunt Melissande. She always brings Everett and me little almond cookies when she visits. Grandpapa says blessed hell, he’ll never be free of The Face. What’s The Face, Uncle Jason?”
Jason heard his father groan, his mother laugh. He turned to his father, brow raised. “Cursing, in front of this little scamp?”
“He’s got ears as sharp as you and James had when you were his age,” Douglas Sherbrooke, the earl of Northcliffe said, and poked his wife in her ribs. “Be quiet, Alex. I don’t believe a lad can be too young to learn of the Sherbrooke curse.”
“I agree,” Corrie said. “No, don’t you dare disagree with me, James Sherbrooke. Blessed hell is always your prelude when
you’re ready to cut loose.” She grinned over at Jason. “He gets mad at me—only the good Lord could possibly understand why—and I know he wants to throw me out a window, but he has to make do with blessed hell and stomp out of the room.”
“A monstrous lie,” James said, then loudly cleared his throat when his two little boys turned wide eyes to him. “Jason, do you want me to liberate you from at least one of those imps?”
Both imps wrapped their arms more tightly around Jason’s neck, nearly choking him. Jason shook his head. “Not yet. All right, lads, can we settle ourselves down for a moment or do you want me to dance you around the drawing room? Your grandmama can play a waltz on the piano, if you like.”
“Let’s dance!” Douglas shouted, his feet kicking out.
“I want to waltz too,” Everett shouted in Jason’s other ear. “What’s waltz?”
There was laughter in the air now, the awful deadening stress and anxiety swept under the carpet, at least for the time being. To Jason, it felt wonderful. He began to waltz slowly about the drawing room, tightening his hold on the squirming little bodies, kissing their ears and their chins, and watched his mother pick up her skirts and walk quickly to the piano where she soon was playing a waltz he’d heard at a ball in Baltimore some two months before.
James Sherbrooke, Lord Hammersmith, twenty-eight minutes older than his twin, sat back, aware of his smiling wife’s warm self now pressed close to his right side, and looked toward his brother. He wasn’t surprised Jason looked as natural as could be waltzing around with two small boys in his arms, since James Wyndham had often written about how well Jason handled his own four children. He wondered if James Wyndham had ever told Jason about all the letters he himself had written here to Northcliffe Hall, at first to reassure all of them, then later detailing Jason’s successes on the racetrack, the mares he’d selected for James’s breeding program, the wonderful stallion he’d found for his host that had made him a bloody fortune in stud fees.
But all the letters didn’t make up for the lost years. He felt his heart fill to bursting. At least his twin had finally begun acknowledging all of them after two years of perfunctory, emotionless letters.
Little Douglas was right; they were no longer identical. Well, they were, objectively, but anyone who knew the both of them wouldn’t confuse them anymore. Jason was more—what was the word? More spare, maybe that was it, though they were still of a size. The big changes were on the inside. James could see the suffering deep in his twin’s eyes, and it hurt him, even as he understood it.
They’d never been identical on the inside, but they’d been connected, had known what the other worried about, what the other was feeling at any given moment. Their experiences had made them into vastly different men, the advanced age of thirty not all that far distant. He looked toward his smiling father, nearly sixty, his black and silver hair still thick, as he was always pointing out to his wife.
James saw that Hollis was stationed near the drawing room door, his foot tapping to the beat of the waltz. He was smiling, and there was such love and relief in that smile that James felt warmed to his soul. He knew how Hollis felt.
Now James had to find out what was in his twin’s mind. But not tonight. His precious, loud, and demanding little boys had saved the evening from being a silent torture, everyone afraid to say anything that could be taken the wrong way, everyone walking on eggshells around Jason. He said to Corrie, “Have I told you recently that you are very smart indeed?”
“Not since last May, I believe it was.”
He rubbed his knuckles on her cheek. “You brought Douglas and Everett into nail-biting silence and look what happened. Jason is waltzing with them.”
“It seemed the thing to do,” she said.
James took Corrie’s hand in his. He leaned back, and allowed the warmth of the laughter to flow through him.
Jason was home. At last he was home and that was all that mattered.
CHAPTER 4
The two brothers stood side-by-side on the cliff overlooking the Poe Valley.
The silence between them was awkward. James finally said, “We spent so many hours here as boys. Remember the time you hurled my book on Huygens off the cliff, you were so mad at me?”
“I remember throwing the book over the side, laughing when the wind caught it and sent it even farther away, but I don’t remember why I was mad.”
James laughed. “I don’t either.”
“I do remember you and Corrie lying on your backs on this hill on clear evenings, staring up at the stars.”
“We still do that. The boys have heard me talking about the Astrological Society, listened to me whine about how my telescope doesn’t magnify enough. Unfortunately, now they’re demanding to come with their mother and me. Can you imagine? Two three-year-olds holding still for longer than thirty seconds?”
Jason said, smiling, “No, it won’t happen. Alice Wyndham, James and Jessie’s four-year-old, would be looking up at the stars while sucking her thumb, loudly, and be demanding an apple tart in the next breath. But it won’t be long at all before the four of you are stretched out like logs on the hearth looking at the heavens.”
They fell silent. Then James couldn’t stand it any longer. He grabbed his brother, held on tight. “By God, I’ve missed you. It’s like part of myself simply disappeared. I couldn’t bear it, Jason.”
Jason held himself stiff, utterly rigid—for about three seconds. Then he saw James’s utter relief that he, Jason, who’d nearly cost him his life, was back again. His generosity astounded Jason. Jason couldn’t help himself; he pulled away. He felt self-conscious, clumsy, and so very sorry that he wished for the thousandth time that what had happened could be undone, but of course it couldn’t. Nothing could ever be changed once it happened. He said, voice thick, “Forgive me, James, it’s still difficult for me. I’m so very sorry for what happened. Your acceptance of me now is so very like you.”
“Don’t you understand? I never didn’t accept you. I never blamed you, nor did anyone else.”
Jason waved that away. “The truth is the truth. You knew I couldn’t stay here, not after what I did.”
James accepted the rebuff though it hurt him to his soul. “I knew how you felt and I did understand, but I still couldn’t bear it. Neither could Mother and Father. It’s been difficult without you, Jase.” He paused a moment, drew himself together, and stared out over the green Poe Valley. “You’re staying home now?”
“Yes. I’ll be looking for my own property. I want to own and operate my own stud farm.”
James felt a surge of pride. He wanted to tell Jason that James Wyndham had written that Jason was magic with horses, that he would soon be one of the premier breeders in England. He asked, trying his best to sound nonchalant, “Where are you interested in buying?”
“Why, near here of course.”
James nearly whooped aloud. He let himself breathe again. He gave his brother a fat smile. “You’ll not believe this, Jase, but old Squire Hoverton—remember, we called him the Old Squid, because he always had a hand to catch you no matter how many thieving little varmints there were in his apple orchard? Well, he died. You remember his son, Thomas, don’t you? He and his father were constantly arguing about the money the squire spent?”
“Yes, I remember. I also remember wanting to throw Thomas in a ditch. What a fool he was.”
“He’s still a fool. He’s wanted to sell out since the minute after his father’s funeral. There have been no buyers because Thomas is asking too much, probably because he owes an immense amount to his creditors. I’ve heard that he gambles at every hell in London.”
Jason nodded. “Fortunately Squire Hoverton spent a great deal of money modernizing the stables, the paddocks, and the stalls.”
James said, “The house is probably moldering on its foundation, but who cares? Well, a wife would care, but since you’re not married, it doesn’t matter. What you’re interested in is the condition of the stables and stal
ls, the health of the land itself, and the beech and pine forests. I’m not sure of the acreage, but a thousand acres comes to mind. We’ll ask.”
Jason couldn’t contain his excitement. “What good fortune indeed. Bless the kind Lord for letting such blighters as Thomas appear occasionally. Let’s go now, James, let’s go see it.”
Thirty minutes later, the twins pulled Bad Boy and Dodger into the lane leading to Lyon’s Gate, once one of the premier stud farms in southern England. Jason said, “I remember Thomas was a bully, and that’s always a disguise for weakness.”
“I agree. Thomas must be in desperate need of money by now. I’ll wager you’ll be able to buy the property at an excellent price. Father’s solicitor can deal with it for you if you decide you want it.”
“Wily William Bibber?”
“Yes, old Wily Willy is still working his magic. Father says he’s like Hollis—he’ll probably be dead six months before he stops working. Now, Thomas immediately sold off all the horses. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sold off all the furniture in the house, and all the tack as well. His creditors probably made him sell the silver. But look at the stables, Jason, they look solid even from here—some paint, some horses, new equipment, some excellent grooms, good care and management, and—” James shut up. He didn’t want to overdo. His blood was surging in his veins. He was praying hard now.
Jason said, looking about, “It doesn’t look all that bad, does it, given that it’s been sitting here abandoned for what? Over a year, you said?”
“Nearly two years now.”
“Thomas is indeed a wastrel and I’m grateful for it,” Jason said in a voice so filled with excitement, James wanted to sing.
Jason pulled Dodger up in front of the neat redbrick Georgian home, ivy hanging off in clumps, dead bushes surrounding it, glass from broken windows scattered on the barren ground. “I can see Mother rubbing her hands together, picturing how everything will look when she’s finished, ordering around a dozen gardeners, all of them staggering around with buckets of plants.”
Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123) Page 98
