A hard lump formed in Helena’s throat. The loss of his father had affected Jonathan the most and he rarely spoke of him. “If you sit quietly beside me, I’ll point out everything for you.”
Helena recalled the journey, which had brought her to London ten years before. How different her return would be now she was a wealthy widow with a mansion, two businesses, three sons, and a complement of servants at her command.
The long miles proved less tedious than she had imagined, although the journey took longer than anticipated. Traveling with four children under the age of seven proved a good deal of work, with boredom, fractious tempers, and wailing demands for food, sleep and exercise. Some of these from Mary Ann.
With mounting excitement, they reached the Devon border, and in no time at all and the familiar red walls of Exeter. The porter at the North gate bowed low as the carriages and escorts rumbled beneath the gatehouse as they climbed the steep incline of the Longbrook.
At the sound of a shout, Helena looked back through the window where Henry leaned out of the coach behind, calling that they were nearly home.
The twins waved and shouted back, while Chloe frantically tried to stop them tumbling out onto the road.
Loxsbeare looked exactly as Helena remembered, solid, familiar, and welcoming. Although she never saw the house during its period of neglect, Aaron had written a lengthy description of the works carried out to restore it to its former glory.
The ham stone walls had been cleaned and seemed puffed up in the sunshine, the creeping moss and ivy cut away. The hinges of the mullioned windows were repaired so they hung straight and shut tight, the lop-sided gates re-hung. Straggling weeds had been removed from the cobbles in the yard, and the stables filled with horses, dogs, cats, feed, and stable boys running busily back and forth.
Aaron sauntered down the steps, wigless and casually dressed, but the obvious master of his own domain. His fair hair was bleached whiter by the sun and his skin had browned.
“Henry, Ellie, you are a day late, I was beginning to fret about you all.” His happy smile made a mockery of his words as he flung open the door of Helena’s carriage.
“Jonathan you’ve grown,” he cried as the boys clamoured for attention. “I’ll have to get you on one of my new ponies, and Edmund, let me help you down old chap, that suit must be very uncomfortable in this heat. What say we get you to the kitchens for some cool milk? Hannah you grow prettier by the day. And how is my Little Charles?”
The little boy leapt forward into his uncle’s arms with all the confidence of one who had never been dropped. “Hoy, you are getting heavy, my boy.”
Aaron conducted a noisy play-fight with the boys on the cobbles, teasing Hannah, and making her blush.
Chloe hefted a bag from the rear, which Glover deftly took from her, while the footmen walked back and forth, stacking baggage in the hallway.
A harassed nursery maid issued shrill instructions at the children, who ran around the stable yard like puppies, before disappearing inside the house.
Henry stood on the cobbles, staring up at the house, a wary expression on his handsome face.
“Are you glad to be home?” Helena linked her arm through his as they approached the front steps.
“I feel – strange,” he said, his voice choked.
Helena nodded in understanding. She knew it was unreasonable, but nothing looked quite as her memories told her it would.
Once inside, Henry halted, staring fixedly at the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He had hardly spoken of the day their mother died, but she could see he was reliving it as he stood there.
“It was a long time ago, Henry,” Helena whispered.
“Right now it doesn’t feel like it.” He gave a tiny shiver. “But I know.”
Helena’s eyes misted with tears as squeals of childish laughter rang through the corridors. Laughter that had once been hers, Aaron’s and Henry’s.
Mary Ann sent the nurse to chastise the children, but Aaron would not hear of it. “I want this house to echo with children’s voices again, Mary Ann. Leave them be, it is all new to them still, they will settle down.”
“And this, from a man who says he would not make a commendable father?” Helena said, while Aaron flushed a deep red.
Helena frowned as she took in the gleaming glass, the re-positioned paintings, and polished furniture. “These are all Mother’s things,” she said, disbelieving. “Wasn’t the house empty when you arrived? And don’t tell me you discovered all this at Samuel Ffoyles’, because I know otherwise.”
“Tobias and Samuel concealed it all with the help of old Betty,” Aaron said.
Helena experienced a sharp rush of grief at the name, for Tobias remained a difficult subject between them.
“So the servants did not… I mean all this was still here?”
“Did you think they ran off with our possessions?” Henry asked.
Helena lifted her chin. “No, well…yes…perhaps…” She felt her face grow warm. “Oh, I don’t know.”
Aaron and Henry regarded her with identical mocking grins.
Helena glared at each of them in turn. “I was confused during those days. All my life I trusted everyone. Why should I not? Then the rebellion came and everything changed. I could no longer trust anyone, not Miles Blanden, not you.” She cuffed Aaron lightly. “And those letters you wrote from Holland were hard to stomach.”
“My letters?” Aaron pulled back his chin, his head tilted. “They upset you?”
“Indeed they did,” Henry muttered, earning him a warning scowl from Mary Ann.
Helena was about to deny it, but hesitated. This was a good day for the truth. “You were so cold and, well, you sounded like Father.”
“I found myself the head of the family, with no idea how to behave.” Aaron looked suddenly young and touchingly uncertain. “Do you still think me cold and unfeeling?”
“You have mellowed since then, brother.”
“And you went looking for enemies, and found one.” Aaron squeezed her shoulder gently.
“You were never my enemy. But Lord Blanden—” She broke off as the memory returned of that day he had come to Lambtons and threatened her.
“I did the same myself,” Aaron said. “I have since learned hatred is futile. Especially against a man such as Miles Blanden.”
“He would be wise to keep his distance though,” Henry said from behind them.
Helena turned to see Mary Ann drop a light kiss on his cheek.
“What are we loitering here for? I have much to show you.” Aaron ushered them toward the hall, though he seemed nervous, even edgy as he showed them the house. He rushed them through rooms and when Helena wanted to open doors and peer into corners, he guided her away, saying she had plenty of time to explore.
Servants scurried about, completing the unpacking, while nursery maids fed the children and put them to bed. Listening to their indignant protests, Helena would never have imagined they were exhausted. Dusk fell and the candles were lit, an extravagant dinner laid out in the dining hall. Like old times, but different.
“Well, everything looks wonderful here, Aaron,” Henry said. With a glass of good claret in one hand and his wife’s delicate fingers nestled in the other, he couldn’t have looked more content. “So tell us, why the insistence we all arrive together?”
“We packed everything in such a rush when your letter came, I’m sure I forgot dozens of things.” Helena laughed.
Aaron opened his mouth, but no words came.
The hairs on the back of Helena’s neck rose. “What’s wrong, Aaron?”
He chewed his bottom lip and gave a cough. “I wanted today to be perfect.”
“It has been.” Mary Ann laid a hand on his arm.
“I can delay this no longer.” Aaron stared at the table. “There is something I must show you.”
“Show us what?” Henry’s voice took on a hard edge.
Helena was about to make a trite remark about not liking
surprises, but the look on Aaron’s face kept her silent. Nervous, she was the last to join the procession making its way down the rear corridor to the steward’s room.
Aaron paused at the door, took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
“I wondered about that earlier.” Henry displayed his lop-sided smile. “I don’t remember it ever being locked.”
Helena stepped across the threshold and was instantly spirited back six months and two hundred miles, to the rear salon at Palmer House on the day of Guy’s funeral.
The walls were draped in black cloth and tall silver candlesticks stood sentry at the four corners of a black painted coffin lying on a trestle. The steady flames lifted the gloom a little, but the drapes muffled all sound.
Helena’s breathing quickened and her head spun.
“Who is it?” Henry asked the question Helena knew would come, but didn’t want answered.
No one spoke.
An invisible thread pulled Helena forward and slowly a face emerged from the swathes of white silk. The familiarity of the emerging features robbed her lungs of air; her worst fears and best hope of the previous ten years froze her to the spot.
Beside her, Henry moaned. “No. It cannot be!”
“It is, Henry.” Helena groped for his hand.
The contours of Sir Jonathan Woulfe’s face were filled out, probably by the skill of a local embalmer, the skin tightly stretched over the fleshless bones of an angular skull. The hair was clean and although not as full as it had been in life, lay in waves on the shoulders of an immaculate black velvet coat.
“Where did… How?” Henry’s obvious distress drew Mary Ann to his side.
Helena was glad for him. If anyone could take away his pain it was Mary Ann. Envious of their devotion, she realized she missed… exactly whom exactly did she miss?
The outline of the coffin blurred as Helena’s eyes filled. How he came to be there and the manner of his death could be dealt with at another time. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, some of them in anger. She crept forward, half expecting him to react to her presence. “You shouldn’t have left us.” She forced the words past a rapidly closing throat. “But I hope you are finally at peace, Father.”
With their goodbyes said, Aaron closed the door behind him, but this time he didn’t lock it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
June 1695, Loxsbeare Manor, Exeter – Helena
The next morning, Helena dressed carefully in unrelieved black. “For the last time,” she told her reflection. “For Father or for Guy.”
The Palmer coach took them down the hill to St. Mary Arches Church, the boys clad in black long coats and periwigs with silk bands tied around their upper arms.
Samuel Ffoyle waited at the lytch gate with Nathan Bayle and Susannah, Robin, Rebekah and their families. The Minister was not the dour, unsmiling Master Triske, but an equally unprepossessing younger man.
The Woulfe family vault behind the altar gaped open, the tolling bell rung and prayers intoned to reunite Sir Jonathan with his wife and brother.
Helena flinched as the iron door clanged shut, just as she had the first time she heard it ten years before. Her eyes were dry when she turned to hug an older, but achingly familiar Nathan Bayle, who bowed over her hand. With their condolences spoken, he introduced her proudly to his and Susannah’s family of four sandy-haired, brown-eyed children.
Their youngest, a tiny girl of about three with a shock of red-brown hair stood beside Nathan, whose large hand rested on her shoulder. “We named her Meghan,” He said gently.
Helena nodded, unable to speak as memories of Meghan Ffoyle crowded her head.
On the return journey to Loxsbeare, the Ffoyle carriage joined the convoy that rolled into the courtyard and emptied their assorted passengers onto the cobbles. Helena cast aside her black veil and strode into the hall, half expecting to see Betty Humbold come waddling out of a side door.
The prim woman Aaron had engaged as housekeeper bobbed in respectful awe in response to Helena’s order for cakes, fruit punch and hot tea to be served in the sunny garden, where the Woulfes, Ffoyle and Bayle children were released onto the grass to make as much noise as they wished.
* * *
August 1695, Loxsbeare Manor, Exeter – Helena
Helena’s long, hot summer days at Loxsbeare were spent in leisure and pleasure around dinner tables, visiting neighbours and making trips into the city.
“I had not realized how rigid London living is, and how strict its etiquette, Chloe,” Helena observed as together they stored away her heavy gowns of silk and brocade, substituting them for simpler skirts and bodices in lighter fabrics.
The boys exchanged their wigs, long coats, and high shoes, for simple jackets and soft breeches. Their hair was left to fall round their shoulders and their skins turned brown climbing trees and running in the fields. They enjoyed lavish picnics on the riverbank beneath the Weare Cliffs, where Aaron and Henry taught Hannah and the boys to fish, while she and Mary Ann dangled their feet in the cool, rushing water.
The Mistress Palmer who would have summoned a servant to perform the simplest of tasks took flat baskets into the hedgerows with the younger children to collect berries and wild flowers for the kitchens and still room. They returned, hot and happy, with burrs clinging to Helena’s skirt and smuts on her cheek, Hannah chattering by her side and Little Charles searching for snails on the paths.
Aaron spent summer mornings galloping over the fields with Henry, just to see how fast they could go, or to trot sedately into the city to visit the fulling mills and warehouses.
Exeter soon buzzed with the news that the Woulfes were back at Loxsbeare and a steady stream of curious visitors climbed the hill on horseback, carts and in carriages to make polite calls.
On these occasions, Glover would waylay Helena in the stables or the garden to warn her that a visitor awaited her in the hall. With a resigned sigh, she would lift her skirt like a girl to run upstairs, where Chloe would be waiting to assist her into a more suitable mode of dress for receiving.
Whatever they might have expected, a matron in mourning, or a painted and bewigged fashionable London lady, Helena revelled in the surprised looks on their faces when she appeared, clad in her dove grey and purple half mourning.
Aaron stood at the window in her room one morning, surveying the view while he talked of his plans for refurbishing their mother’s garden. “I’ll rebuild the rose arbour on the far wall and—” he broke off, slapping the windowsill with one hand. “The gall of the man!”
“What man?” Helena looked up from her journal. The pages of the little book contained her happiest and darkest memories, its leather strap softened and frayed with use over the years.
“He’s turning onto the drive. I’m going down there to have him thrown out.” Aaron’s heels drummed on the wooden floor as he crossed to the landing.
Intrigued, Helena followed, reaching the half landing just as the footman admitted Lord Miles Blanden into the hall. She froze on the stairs, watching him pause on the threshold, awaiting attention.
Aaron brushed past her but she grasped his arm. “He’s your neighbour, Aaron, his lands border yours. Somehow, I don’t feel he has come here to make threats. Let me go down to him.”
She left him tapping his fingers on the banister rail as she faced their visitor across the massive fireplace in the great hall. He was certainly a very different figure to the ogre of her nightmares. She had heard his wife had died a protracted and painful death and the man himself looked old and shrivelled, his stance lacking the arrogance she remembered.
He carried an air of defeat about him, as if he knew what he was and wished his life had taken a different road. His penetrating gaze swept the room, lingering on the restored Woulfe possessions as if aware that despite his wealth, he had never been able to make the manor his own during his tenure.
His penetrating eyes widened in admiration when Helena glided forward to greet him. “Lord
Blanden.”
“Mistress Palmer.” He attempted an unsteady bow.
“Would you care to sit, sir?” Helena surprised herself at her cordiality, although she did not offer him refreshment. Instead, they sat perched on high backed chairs facing each other and embarked on a stilted conversation, avoiding all reference to her parents, the western rising, or even their last meeting at Lambtons before Helena’s marriage, when he had threatened her with ruin unless she become his mistress.
“This is my daughter-in-law.” He indicated a pale girl in a drab brown gown who stepped out of the shadows like a wraith, startling Helena, who had no idea she was there. She peered at Helena with myopic eyes, her name instantly forgotten, although she looked to be older than Hugh Blanden.
“There has been no sign of an heir,” he snorted, “but I dare say there is still time.” The girl blushed and dropped her eyes.
In a shameless display of pride, Helena sent for her boys, who arrived fresh from a morning ride, slightly grubby and indignant at being interrupted, but glowing with health and boisterous good looks.
Blanden stared at each of them with blatant envy on his quivering features. When Helena dismissed them to their games again, he rose abruptly to his feet, as if he had seen enough.
He made an almost courtly leg on his departure, although it clearly pained him to bend. However he completed the gesture without flinching and hobbled to the door.
The footman was about to close it when he grasped the wood with a gnarled hand and turned back. “I beg your forgiveness for Sir Jonathan, Mistress Palmer. He was my friend, and I destroyed him with my jealousy.”
And a musket. Helena’s only response was a silent nod, while she resolved silently she would not be the one to tell him what he had done. Let him believe in wandering spirits if he wished.
As his carriage lumbered away down the drive, all Helena’s ghosts went with him.
The Goldsmith's Wife (The Woulfes of Loxsbeare Book 2) Page 27
