Gray found he was walking more slowly the closer he got to his mother’s rooms. Finally, though, he and Jack were there, outside the thick oak doors to the baroness’s chambers.
“You heard what Nella said. Over the years my mother occasionally speaks, occasionally knows who I am, sometimes even realizes who she is. I don’t know, Jack. I don’t know what we’ll find out from her, if anything at all.”
“I know,” Jack said. “I know. It’s all right.”
He gave her a twisted smile, then lightly tapped on the door before turning the knob and walking in. He kept Jack behind him. “Wait a moment,” he said, then walked over to the row of windows that faced the south, over a small garden, exquisitely planted, some of the flowers just beginning to bloom, and beyond to the home wood, a large area covered with oak and pine trees.
It was a beautiful prospect if one were mad and had nothing else to look at.
Gray came down beside his mother’s chair. He gently lifted her hand, kissed her fingers, and said quietly, “Hello, Mother. It’s me, Gray, your son. I’ve come here to visit you.”
The beautiful creature with lustrous thick blond hair plaited atop her head turned slowly to look down at him, on his haunches beside her. He had his mother’s light green eyes, the slant of her eyebrows, the darker color of both brows and eyelashes.
He hadn’t thought to ask Lord Burleigh if he resembled Thomas Levering Bascombe. As for the man he’d believed was his father, he simply didn’t remember if he bore any physical resemblance at all to him.
He squeezed his mother’s hand. “Mother? It’s your son, Gray. I’ve brought you a surprise.”
There was a flicker of interest in her eyes. She said, “A surprise? I do love surprises. Dr. Pontefract brings me surprises occasionally. What a lovely man.”
She was speaking. That was something. Her voice was low and soft. He said, “I’ve married, Mother. I’ve brought you a new daughter. She’s my surprise to you.” He motioned for Jack to come over, and she did, walking more and more slowly the closer she got to the woman who was Gray’s mother.
Only Jack heard the pain in his deep voice. She came down beside him and looked up at his mother. “My lady? My name’s Winifrede. Gray and I were married just a short while ago. We wanted to come and tell you about it.”
Alice St. Cyre, dowager baroness Cliffe, sucked in her breath, and raised her hands to her face, covering her eyes. “No,” she said, her voice nothing more than a die-away whisper. “Not you. Oh, God, go away. I don’t want to see you.”
“Mother? What’s the matter?”
“No! Go away!”
She kept her face covered with her hands. She was crying now, deep, gulping sobs.
Gray slowly rose, then pulled Jack to her feet. “It’s no use. I’ll get Nella.”
Jack trailed out of the lovely bedchamber after him. She looked back once over her shoulder. The dowager baroness was staring toward her, her face filled with—what? Fear? Hatred?
Jack didn’t know what to make of it. She felt herself shudder. She followed Gray from the room.
He wasn’t in their bedchamber. Jack felt a moment of panic, then realized he would be as far away from her as he could. This was the last place he would willingly be.
Jack sighed as she walked to the fireplace and lifted her hands to warm them over the flames. She’d just kissed Georgie good night. She was quite content to sleep with Dolly, particularly with Nella just down the hall and Jack only two rooms away.
Where was Gray?
He’d been so silent after they’d left his mother’s room. It was now ten o’clock at night. Was he brooding? Was he planning how he would annul their marriage?
She simply didn’t know. She began to pace the length of the beautiful bedchamber with its autumn colors. The big downstairs clock stroked twelve long times.
Midnight?
She wasn’t at all sleepy. She wanted Gray. If she but knew where he was, she would have gone to him in an instant. She wanted to hold him, kiss him, even though she knew he would fight that with all his strength.
More time passed until at last she simply couldn’t bear it. She picked up a candle and left her bedchamber. She walked down the dark corridor to the end of the east wing. She raised her hand to knock at her mother-in-law’s door, then slowly lowered it.
What if she were sleeping? It was after midnight. Then she saw the light shining from beneath the door. She gently twisted the doorknob. If Alice was asleep, with candles lit against the gloom, she would simply leave.
Alice St. Cyre was sitting in the same chair, not moving. There was a branch of lighted candles at her elbow. There was a book in her lap. Her eyes were closed, her head resting against the soft cushions of the chair back.
Jack didn’t know what to do. She just stood there, staring at the beautiful woman who wasn’t moving. She read books? If she did, then surely she wasn’t all that mad, all that unaware of the world.
“Why don’t you just come here?”
Jack nearly jumped a foot off the floor at the sound of that soft, feathery voice.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come sit in that chair so I may see you more easily.”
Jack brought the chair closer, then sat down.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
“You’re not at all sorry. You’re bristling with energy. What do you want?”
Alice still hadn’t looked directly at her, even though she’d said she wanted to. No, she was looking down at that slender volume of Voltaire.
A madwoman read Voltaire?
“You couldn’t bear to look at me when you first saw me this afternoon. You covered your face with your hands. You said you didn’t want to see me. You told me to go away.” Jack paused a moment, then said something she didn’t want to say, “You recognize me, ma’am? Do I look familiar to you?”
Alice said nothing. She was utterly still. The beautiful Norwich shawl, all varying shades of blue, fell off her shoulders.
Jack said, “Gray looks a great deal like you. Perhaps you believe I look like someone you know? Perhaps someone you used to know?”
“Thank God he left.”
“Who left, ma’am?”
“Lev. He left. I will never forgive him. He was a monster. Not like my dearest husband. Why did Gray have to kill him? Why?”
“He shot your husband because he was beating you, ma’am, viciously. Gray was afraid he would kill you. He had to do something. He had to protect his mother. To my way of thinking, he saved both of you.”
“I didn’t need to be saved. All I needed was Farley. He loved me.”
Gray was right, Jack thought. This was a sort of madness that was beyond her ken. How to regain any sense in all this? She said, “Ma’am, who is this Lev? Did you love him?”
For the first time, Alice looked at her squarely in the face. “You’re very young. I haven’t been young for longer than you’ve lived. Has he struck you yet, my dear?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Ah. You’ll know he loves you truly when finally he feels free to punish you as well as reward you. I learned so much from my dearest Farley. Dr. Pontefract says that Farley wasn’t sane—that no sane man would strike a woman—but what does he know? Yes, Farley tried and tried to teach me to please him, to please myself. But Gray murdered him. Is Gray trying to teach you?”
“Yes, he is. But he hasn’t ever struck me. He agrees with Dr. Pontefract. Gray would never strike a woman.” She wondered what Gray would be thinking were he to hear what his mother was saying. What memories would her words resurrect?
“Do you recognize me, ma’am?”
But Alice, dowager baroness Cliffe, turned away from Jack. She pulled the shawl back up onto her shoulders and knotted it between her breasts. She picked up the thin volume of Voltaire from her lap, looked
at it dispassionately, and tossed it to the floor. “I’m tired,” she said. “Finally, I believe I will sleep. Go away. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Jack slowly rose, not knowing what to do.
“Take that boy with you, the one who murdered my dearest Farley. I wish he would stay gone from here. When he leaves I hope that he’ll never come back, but he always does. I rarely even speak to him, but still he returns. He’s stubborn. But it doesn’t matter. He stole all that I loved from me.”
“He’s your son, that boy. He loves you. He loved you then and that’s why he shot Farley. He was protecting you. He did the only thing he could think of to save you. He shot the man who was beating you to death. Why won’t you remember it as it truly happened?”
“My dearest Farley beat me to death? What utter nonsense—lies, complete lies. I didn’t need to be protected!” Alice jumped up from her chair and hurled herself at Jack. Her thin hands went around Jack’s throat. God, the woman was strong. But Jack was much larger and much stronger. However, she wasn’t as enraged as Alice obviously was.
Finally Jack managed to pull Alice’s hands away. They remained curled inward, ready to strike again, ready to rip the flesh from her throat.
“Stop it,” Jack said low, grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. She struggled, but Jack held firm.
“Stop it,” she whispered now right in her mother-in-law’s face. She shook her again, snapping her head on her neck. “Just stop it. Damn you, do you recognize me? Who is this Lev?”
Alice sagged against her. Jack clasped the woman close. She whispered against her soft, beautiful hair, “Tell me if Gray is your son. Tell me if you ever loved Thomas Levering Bas—oh, my God, that’s Lev, isn’t it? You called my father Lev? Oh, God, you said he was a monster. What did you mean? You said he left? Please, you must tell me!”
She stared helplessly down at Gray’s mother, whose face was pale as a winter’s day. And just as empty, no hint of feeling, or pain, of memory. Just a beautiful face with no person behind it.
Jack had nothing to lose. She drew a deep, steadying breath. She said, “If you will but tell me about Thomas Levering Bascombe, I will keep the boy away from you forever.”
“He murdered my Farley.”
“Yes, I will keep him away from you, if you will just tell me about Lev.”
Alice fell utterly limp against Jack. As gently as she could, Jack eased her back down into her chair. She waved her hand in front of her face. Soft tendrils of blond hair lifted off her cheek. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”
“Lev wanted to marry me,” Alice said in a low monotone, not looking at her or anything else for that matter, as far as Jack could tell. “He begged and begged me, but I had met Farley and he was the one I wanted. We were alone one evening, Lev and I, out in my family’s garden. It was a warm evening, thin white clouds trailing over the moon. Lev pleaded with me again. Then he kissed me. I told him to stop, but he didn’t stop. Lev took my virginity that evening. He raped me. Then he told me, even as he stood over me, his legs spread, his hands on his hips, that I would have to marry him, that I was ruined now, and there was no choice. I was his.”
Alice began to sob, ugly soul-deep sobs. Jack leaned down and gathered her into her arms. “It’s all right. It was a very long time ago.” And even as she spoke, hope was withering inside her. Her father had raped this woman? Oh God, she couldn’t imagine it. Not her father, not the man she’d adored. She remembered so clearly sitting in front of him astride his great stallion, his strong arms around her, humming. Yet now she felt the angry, helpless tears of her mother-in-law hot against her neck. She closed her eyes, but there was no hope for it. She simply had no doubt that it had happened just as Alice had said. “It’s all right,” she whispered again against Alice’s hair. “What happened then? Can you tell me?”
“Lev told me he would call on my father the next day. They would arrange a marriage contract. Everything would be all right.”
“Didn’t you tell your father what he’d done to you?”
Alice shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. He would have blustered about, then he would have done exactly what Lev knew he’d do. He would force me to wed him. I can even see my father blaming me, accusing me of seducing Lev, forcing him to marry me, not the other way around.”
“What happened?”
“I had met Farley. I loved him. I ran away, to him. He lived in London, in rooms on Jermym Street. He took me in. I knew my father was looking for me, but he’d never imagine that I would come to Farley. I stayed with Farley, and then we married. Gray was born just over nine months later.”
Jack stumbled back. She folded in on herself. Everything was over now. No more hope. Nothing that was good, that was joyful, remained. She knew she was crying, but there was no noise. Everything had burst inside her, and she was left with nothing at all, except this emptiness that would be with her forever, until she died, and she would die alone. She would never know Gray as her husband, as the man she would share her life with. It was over before it even began. She simply couldn’t stand it. She rose slowly, raised her face to the sky, and shouted, “No!”
“What’s wrong?”
It was Alice. Suddenly she sounded perfectly normal, as if they’d been speaking of the spring daffodils.
“I am married to Gray and I love him and he is my half brother and that is what is wrong.”
She wanted to kill the woman, simply take her white neck between her hands and squeeze until this damnable pain that was eating her lessened.
But it wouldn’t lessen, ever.
“You are Lev’s daughter,” Alice said. “My son told me this afternoon that he had married you.”
“Yes, I am Lev’s daughter.”
“You have the look of him. It frightened me how much you look like him.”
“Yes, I know. I also have something of the look of your son, Gray, who also has the look of you and of his father, Lev. Haven’t you noticed? We are both fair. My eyes are blue and his are green, not much difference there.”
“What are you talking about? You make no sense, girl.”
“Lev is my father. Lev is also Gray’s father. That’s what you just said.”
“You believe Lev is Gray’s father?”
Jack just stared at her stupidly, wondering how much madness was within herself and how much in her mother-in-law.
Alice waved her white hand in Jack’s face. “Oh, no, you silly girl, you don’t understand. When Farley took care of me, I meant that he saved me. I miscarried Lev’s child four weeks later, just before we married, and I nearly died because the bleeding wouldn’t stop. He nursed me, saved me. Oh, I remember he was so desperately pleased that I wouldn’t bear another man’s child. I remember that he got drunk, he was so relieved. But to my beloved Farley, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t a virgin, that Lev had taken me first. It didn’t matter until later, because I was so very slow to learn, to admit my guilt in the matter. Farley was always trying to get me to understand my guilt, to admit what I had done, to pray to God every night that I owed Farley more than I would ever owe another human being. And it was true.”
Jack said slowly, “Evidently Lev always believed that Gray was his son. He told Lord Burleigh that Gray was his son, made him believe it.”
For the first time, Alice smiled, a beautiful wide smile. “Yes, I know. It pleased Farley to let him believe it. Then he would punish me. All of it pleased him.”
“Lev named me Graciella, wanting me to be close in name at least to Gray.”
“Lev was a fool. I wish he had died when he went to the Colonies. He haunted me, the bastard. He came here to Needle House after Gray murdered Farley. He wanted me yet again, I know it. I know he wanted me to admit that Gray was his son. I refused to see him. Jeffrey told him of my dreadful illness. He had no choice but to leave. He finally died, did he not?”
<
br /> “Yes, Lev finally died. Will you tell Gray that Farley is indeed his father?”
“You promised I would never have to see him again.”
“That’s right.”
Alice rubbed her chin with her white hand. “I would never have to see that murdering boy again. I could forget that he even existed. But I would have to see him to tell him that Lev isn’t his father.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You could write it all on paper for him to read. Will you write down that Lev isn’t his father, that I am not his half sister?”
Alice squared her shoulders and jumped to her feet with all the grace of a young girl. She looked into Jack’s face and said, “I have thought about it. My answer is no. He killed his father. He killed my Farley. If there is suffering, then he will suffer. He deserves to suffer. There’s no reason he should be happy after what he did. It is ridiculous that he should be happy with a wife. No, let him believe that his wife is in reality his sister. That will bring him more misery than he can stomach, and he deserves it. He is the monster, not his poor father. He murdered my only love.”
The dowager baroness Cliffe turned away and walked to the far windows. She pulled back the thick green satin draperies and stared out into the black night. She said nothing more.
Jack stood there, mute, unable to think of a single word that might change the woman’s mind.
What was she to do now?
29
JACK HURRIED back to their bedchamber, flung open the door, and ran into the darkness. There was a fire in the fireplace, no other light. Gray hadn’t been here. She pulled up short. She realized it wouldn’t matter if he were here or not. He wouldn’t believe her. He would have to have proof.
Where was he? Probably hidden away somewhere in this house, pondering how he would gain an annulment, wondering what he would do with her, a wife he cared about who soon wouldn’t be his wife if he could help it.
Slowly, she sank to the floor in front of the fireplace. She looked at the one stump of wood that was just beginning to burn. She lowered her face into her hands.
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