The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5

by Catherine Coulter

  She didn’t move when she felt his hand on her shoulder, gripping her tightly.

  “Jack, don’t cry, damn you, not now, not just yet. We’re not beaten. Come along. I just remembered that there’s a large portrait of my father painted when he was not too much older than I am now. Just after I killed him, I pulled that portrait down and dragged it to the closet beneath the stairs on the first floor. Come, let’s go see it.”

  He wasn’t making annulment plans. He sounded excited. He sounded hopeful. She looked up at him and swallowed the damnable tears.

  “Gray,” she said, “a portrait of your father?”

  “Yes, I never wanted to see the miserable bastard again as long as I lived. I wanted to erase him. Come along, Jack. It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning. I was down in the library searching for anything my father wrote that could concern me, Thomas Bascombe, or my paternity. I didn’t find anything as of yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something, somewhere, I will contact his steward tomorrow. Don’t worry, Jack. Don’t give up. What’s wrong with you? Come, let’s go find that portrait.”

  He hadn’t given up. She jumped to her feet, smoothed her skirts, then took his face between her hands. “I’m sorry I collapsed on you. It wasn’t well done of me. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later, Gray and Jack together dragged out a four-foot-tall, two-and-a-half-foot-wide portrait that had to weigh more than the boy who’d dragged it in here all those years ago. It was wrapped in a thick white Holland cover. Jack was spitting out spiderwebs from her mouth as they emerged from the deep under-stairs closet.

  “Let’s bring it into the study,” Gray said. Once they had it clear of the closet, he hefted it up onto his back, saying over his shoulder, “Bring the candle branch, Jack. Yes, close the door first. That place was black as night and dirty as well. I’ll tell Nella about it.”

  She followed him silently, her eyes on that huge covered portrait. She was praying as hard as she could. There had to be something in that portrait, she thought, just a simple something, some sign, a small proof.

  She watched Gray prop the painting up against his desk. Slowly he pulled off the cover. He wiped the cloth over the painting. She knew he wasn’t yet looking at it. He rubbed for a few more minutes, tossed the cloth away, then looked at her. “Come here, Jack. We’ll face this together. Why are you hanging back? No, don’t be frightened.” He walked to her and gently took the branch of candles out of her hand and set it on a side table near a settee. “What’s wrong?” He gently pulled her against him. “You were so certain that everything would be all right. You made me ashamed that I’d believed it all without a single question. Then I remembered the painting. Come, let’s face it together.” Gray lightly touched his fingers to her white cheek. There was a small veil of spiderweb. He wiped it away.

  She pulled away from him, grabbed up the candle branch, and set it atop the desk. It cast bright light over the painting. She took several steps back to stand beside Gray. Together they looked at the painting.

  She stared at a tall, very lean man who was standing outside a stable. He held a bridle in a black-gloved hand. His other hand—not gloved—lay negligently on his hip. One leg was bent slightly, but still, he stood tall and proud. He was handsome, beautifully dressed in riding clothes, his head thrown back as if he’d just laughed at something someone had said just beyond him.

  Gray breathed out slowly. “I’d forgotten what he looked like. I suppose I didn’t ever want to remember.”

  He was as dark as Lucifer. One simply knew that beneath his white-powered wig his own hair was black and thick, opaque, without a single swatch of lighter color in it. His skin was swarthy, his eyes as dark as a bottomless pit, probably as black as his hair. His eyebrows were thick and arched, black slashes scoring his brow. Those eyes stared back at them, soulless, without light, filled with nothing that meant anything to Gray.

  “I hated him,” he said quietly. “I hated him more than anything or anyone in my entire life. He looks like Satan, doesn’t he? No humanity in him, just endless cruelty, endless delight in dominating, endless belief in his own power—and he wallowed in his power, Jack, I do remember that. No one went against him. I remember now that he enjoyed simply looking at my mother, touching her beautiful hair, lightly stroking his fingers over her face, her shoulders. An angel and the devil. That’s how they looked together. Her fairness fascinated him.”

  His voice sounded faded, as if he were seeing himself in the past, seeing everything through a child’s eyes.

  “Yes, he must have been something,” she said in a very adult, very matter-of-fact voice. “A splendid fellow, don’t you think? He beat his wife, beat his son, showed no mercy until his son, only a boy, was brave enough to stop him. Now, on the surface of things, he doesn’t seem to have a single feature that he passed on to you. Let’s study it more closely.”

  She took his hand and pulled him forward.

  “Look at the black hairs on the back of his hand,” Gray said, pointing to the ungloved hand that posed on his father’s hip. He held up his own hand, letting the candlelight flow over it. “His hand is square, mine isn’t.”

  “He has long legs. So do you.”

  “Many men have long legs,” Gray said, staring now at the boots he was wearing. “His feet are long and narrow. So are mine. Many men have long, narrow feet. There’s nothing to any of it, Jack.”

  “He has a very heavy beard. You can see it, and given the angle of the sun the artist has painted in, it can’t be later than noon.”

  “Yes, he was quite dark. I’m not. I fear I’m most like my mother, Jack.”

  But Jack wasn’t listening. She was staring at Farley St. Cyre’s wig, powdered stark white, tied in a black ribbon at the nape of his neck. Very slowly, she touched her fingertips to his forehead. “Look closely, Gray.”

  “What is it? He’s wearing a wig. It was the style then.”

  “No, see how the wig doesn’t completely conform to the line of his hair? Don’t you see it? He has a widow’s peak, Gray. You can see the arrow of black hair that the wig doesn’t cover.” She turned to smile up at him and touch his forehead. “Just as you have a widow’s peak, a small one, but it’s there.”

  He stared down at her, mesmerized. “I never knew there was even a name for it. Widow’s peak? Isn’t it common?”

  “Oh, no, not at all common. Yours isn’t all that visible because your hair falls over it, to the side, but look at his, straight and right in the center, a sharp arrow. Yours isn’t nearly so dramatic, but it’s still there.”

  “A thing called a widow’s peak,” he said slowly, stepping away from both her and the large portrait. “To accept this monster as my father because we share this same uncommon hair growth?”

  “Well, there is something else as well,” Jack said, and she told him how she had gone to his mother’s room, and what his mother had told her.

  “Do you remember Thomas Levering Bascombe coming here after your father’s funeral?”

  “No, I have no memory of him at all, ever.”

  “She said she refused to see him. She knew he wanted her again, wanted to marry her.”

  “She’s quite mad, Jack.”

  “Perhaps, but there was no madness in the story she told me, Gray. My father raped her in order to force her to wed him. But it wasn’t his child that grew in her, it was your father’s, her new husband’s. There was no reason for her to lie about the miscarriage, about how your father nursed her, ultimately blamed her for not coming to him a virgin, and beat her, but evidently cared for her nonetheless.”

  “A very strange sort of caring. I daresay she could have been a saint and he still would have beaten her.”

  She shuddered at the truth of what he said. “Strange indeed. She wasn’t making it up, Gray.”

  “You said she refused to tell me of this? You said she refused
to write it down? That makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t she want to tell me?”

  It was hard. She didn’t want to say it, but now there was no choice. “She won’t write it down because she wants you to suffer.”

  He said nothing for a very long time. He simply seemed to stare into his father’s black eyes. “He never hit her face, I remember that now. He worshiped her face, touched her face whenever he passed her. But her back, my God, Jack, she must have been scarred endlessly from the beatings of his belt on her back.”

  “Yes, more than likely. But it was a long time ago, Gray. Unfortunately, your mother still lives in that time, still sees him as the man who, when he wasn’t pounding her, worshiped her. She can’t seem to bring herself to forgive you.”

  “You mean she’s always spoken so little to me when I visited because she hates me?”

  “Probably. I think now that seeing me so unexpectedly, seeing my father in my face, she let down her guard. She had to speak. I suppose I was the catalyst.” Jack knew what she’d just said was true. She also realized that whatever madness gripped his mother, her feelings of hatred for her son were deep and abiding. She thought of Gray as that twelve-year-old boy, saving his mother the only way he knew, and she’d hated him for it. She wanted to weep for the pain he’d endured from these two people who were his parents and should have loved him and nurtured him, but hadn’t.

  Gray said, “All these years and I simply didn’t realize it. Jesus, that bespeaks a fine sensitivity on my part, doesn’t it?”

  He was wallowing in guilt, and she was appalled. She said matter-of-factly, no hint of emotion or pity in her voice, “What it bespeaks is the demented spirit of a woman who could never accept the truth of things, who didn’t have the strength to stand up to a man who hurt her, who turned herself into a victim and sought his cruelty as a drunkard would seek drink.

  “I plan to speak to her again tomorrow. You will listen, hidden, perhaps, and she will tell it all to me again.

  “Now, my question to you is, Gray, will you believe the proof of your father’s widow’s peak combined with the words from your mother’s own mouth?”

  “But why was Lord Burleigh so convinced?”

  “Because my father believed it so deeply. My father was a very serious man, a proud man, a very intelligent man. I also believed him honorable and loyal and infinitely honest. I was wrong. He committed a grave crime against your mother. He is dead, so there is no retribution for him.

  “I must also believe that my father wanted to recognize you as his son because he failed to sire a son by my mother. He had me and that was it. Gray and Graciella.” Jack shook her head. “Such tragedy, Gray. But it’s not our tragedy. Let it remain in the past where it belongs. We’re free of it. You are not my bloody brother. You’re my bloody husband, thank God.”

  Still he held back. “I want to hear my mother speak of it. I must.”

  “Yes,” she said, and she even managed to smile up at him, “I know you must.”

  Jack held Georgie’s small hand, saying even as they walked into the dowager baroness’s sitting room, “She is a very lovely lady, Georgie. She rarely leaves her room, but that’s all right. That just means that we always know where she is.” And, Jack prayed, I hope she will not scare you witless.

  Georgie just hummed, staring around her. “P-P-Pretty room,” she said, broke away from Jack, and dashed to the brilliantly colored silk shawl that lay in shimmering folds over the back of a chair near to the windows.

  “Who are you?”

  Jack walked quickly to Alice’s chair. “That is my little sister, ma’am. Her name is Georgina. She loves bright colors and soft materials.” Jack called out, “Georgie, love, do come here and meet her ladyship.”

  The dowager baroness sucked in her breath. “Her eyes, goodness, how very strange she looks. One gold eye and one blue eye. How very odd. And delightful.”

  Georgie stood her ground, staring at the lovely woman who was staring back at her.

  “She’s as delightful as her eyes,” Jack said. “May we stay with you for a while? I promised Georgie she could see your beautiful room. Is that all right?”

  Jack said nothing more for a good ten minutes, simply waited, watching Georgie eye the woman, then slowly walk to her and stand beside her chair, looking up at her. No one could resist that face, Jack thought. She was right. The dowager baroness wrapped the shawl around Georgie’s head, telling her that she was a sweet young miss protecting her hair from a stiff wind, and wasn’t this lovely? Then she draped it over her shoulders. She was behaving quite normally, just as someone who liked children would behave. Jack never once turned to look back toward the bedchamber door.

  Finally she said, “Georgie, if her ladyship doesn’t mind, why don’t you carry that lovely shawl over to the window and hold it up so that the sun can shimmer through it and make colorful patterns on your arm. You can make it magic with the sunlight.”

  “That was well done,” Alice said, after some moments of watching Georgie waving the shawl through the bright sunlight pouring through the windows. “You brought the child in here to pave your way. She is not Lev’s daughter?”

  “No, she is my half sister. After Lev died, my mother remarried. You’re right, of course. That’s exactly why I brought Georgie with me. I worried that you would refuse to see me again.”

  “What makes you think that I still won’t refuse to speak of anything to you? I am merely polite, you know. The child is adorable.”

  “Yes, she’s mine now. Her father didn’t beat her, but he didn’t care if she lived or died. She’s safe now with me.”

  “What does Gray think of her?”

  “She quite has him dancing to her tune. Your son is a very good man, ma’am. I truly don’t believe it’s right for you to want to make him suffer. It isn’t fair to him. Nor is it at all fair to me or to Georgie.”

  “Fairness has nothing to do with life,” Alice said staring up at Jack, her voice sharp and cold. “Look what happened to me and then speak of fairness again. You’ll find it impossible.”

  “I see a woman who has known tragedy, as many women have. I see a woman who can have anything she wishes to have simply by asking. I see a woman who likely hasn’t done a bit of work in all the years she’s been sitting dependent and lazy in this lovely room. I see a woman who can’t face the present because she prefers to nurture a long-dead past, a pathetic past, truth be told. I see a woman who holds the past close, lovingly remembers everything that happened to her so that she can better feel her own pain, remember her own misery, wallow in her own sense of ill-use.

  “I see a beautiful woman who is as sane as I am, and the good Lord knows I’m dreadfully sane, more sane than is probably good for me and all those around me.” She stepped close, leaned down, and clasped the arms of Alice’s chair. “Why don’t you think about walking out of this damned bedchamber? Why don’t you think of running down those elegant stairs and flinging open the front doors? Why don’t you go riding with Dr. Pontefract, ma’am? There is a lovely mare in the stable named Poet. Your coloring and hers would fit together quite nicely. Ah, I see you turn all sorts of pale and lean back away from me, like I’m a witch.

  “Well, perhaps I am. Perhaps it’s wise of you to be afraid of me.” Slowly Jack straightened, folding her arms over her breasts. “Don’t you look just lovely sitting there all useless, worth nothing to anyone, waiting for someone to lightly caress your forehead and tell you how lovely you are, how very fragile?

  “But you’re not at all fragile, are you? Oh, no, you’re unforgiving, you’re cold. You wish to hate a man who probably saved your life many years ago. That hatred is the only thing you nurture inside you because there is naught else but emptiness. What a wondrous thing: your present and your future—both faded before they can even come to pass because you’ve done nothing to fill yourself with anything good and worthwhile.r />
  “You hated a twelve-year-old boy—your own son—because you simply couldn’t face life by yourself, making your own decisions, never again having anyone tell you what to do.”

  “Damn you. Shut up, you miserable little bitch!”

  Jack rose tall. She tapped her foot. She looked mildly bored. She raised an eyebrow and said in some surprise, “Me? A bitch? At least I’m an honest bitch, ma’am. I don’t practice my die-away airs to gain my way, to garner sympathy. I don’t cut off my own flesh and blood because I’m incapable of seeing the past as it really happened.”

  “No, you’re wrong. You are cruel, unfair. You don’t know what I’ve suffered.”

  Jack smiled down at the woman whose cheeks were becomingly flushed with healthy, furious color, whose chest was heaving with more passion that she’d probably felt in the past dozen years. Her smile widened. “You are very lucky, ma’am. Madness becomes you. May you enjoy your madness for many years to come. May you hold it close and find it warm as a lover and nurturing as a mother because it is all you will ever know, all you will allow yourself ever to know.”

  She turned on her heel, calling over her shoulder, “ Georgie, love? Are you ready to take your leave of her ladyship?”

  The little girl, who was blessed with sound hearing, turned slowly to her sister and the beautiful woman whose hands were fisted on the arms of her chairs. “T-Thank you, ma’am, for letting me p-p-play with your sh-shawl.”

  Alice looked at the flowing shawl that had filled and overflowed the little girl’s fingers. The sight had warmed her. Speaking to the child, the first child she’d seen in so very long, had made her wonder why she’d shut herself away from such a very simple joy. She looked at Jack, then beyond to where her son stood, arms folded over his chest, leaning against the wall beside the door, his face pale, the skin stretched tightly over his bones. The cast in his eye, that slight looking both outward and inward at the same time, it was from her.