by Julia Donner
She placed another handful of papers on top of the others and turned to him. “My distrust of his character led me to decide to search while he wasn’t present. Taffy kept watch.”
Bracing her backside on the edge of the desk, lucky desk, she said, “My object was to gather the evidential information and present it to you.”
“You needn’t have bothered with that. You could’ve merely asked me to tell him to leave.”
She looked down at the tips of her slippers peeking from under her skirt. He liked the bit of lace that edged the hem. She nodded, and whispered, “I know.”
“What made you suspicious of Holcombe?
“Intuition, at first. I became positive on our wedding day. Holcombe came to my door to tell me I had a visitor. Mrs. Rawlins. But she had quite obviously come to see you and he had hoped to stir up trouble.”
A mental shriek of warning made him steer away from the subject of Jessamyn. “Do you miss Charhill?”
She studied him for a moment before answering. “Not as much as I thought I would. Cousin Henry preferred making decisions. I had to take every request to him down to the darning of socks. And most females understand that they will leave their home and go to live with a husband or make their way in the world somehow.”
“I should have remembered that Charhill is entailed.”
“Yes, and the heir has patiently waited to hear final word about my parents.”
“I take that to mean it isn’t Cousin Henry.”
“No. There’s an uncle in Glasgow, and after him, one of his sons. Cousin Henry is related to my mother. The fells are from her side.”
That topic exhausted and with the subject of Jessamyn still recent, he quickly asked, “You were saying something as you came in. You wanted to speak to me about something important?”
When she lifted her head, there was a look in her eyes he’d never seen before, not quite deception, more like regret. “Please hear me out. This will be difficult for me to express.”
He gave her a nod of encouragement and she continued, “There has been something I’ve not felt comfortable discussing with you. Admittedly, it’s not a woman’s place to pry or make judgment on her husband, but I must confess that I have no tolerance for deceit. I admire and respect the truth. I feel most comfortable with individuals who will speak to me with the respect of honesty. To feel that one is being lied to cannot inspire confidence. Perhaps this is a weakness on my part, but there it is. I will never feel safe, feel confident in our marriage if you insist on keeping the truth from me. There is something, Bainbridge. Some thing. I know there is, and that knowledge gnaws at me every day. Can you understand this?”
His heart sank then began to beat so strongly that he felt its pulse inside his head. The thing he feared most was about to come out in the open. Leticia stood in front of the desk, her brown eyes awash with a bleakness that terrified him down to his soles. She’d discovered his secret. She had to have done. Why else would she look so wounded, so betrayed? Had Holcombe told her, left her a vicious note before he ran off?
His mind raced to find alternatives. His father’s voice rang in his head, the scorn and mockery. His mother’s encouragement and gentle words countered, telling him to take the to time act wisely.
Perhaps a reprieve waited. Leticia might have finally received word about her missing parents and that was the source of the pain in her eyes. Then shame filled him. How could he resort to that sort of weakness, preferring that she feel broken by grief rather than disappointed in him?
A lowering memory made him want to escape this room—the memory of the day his mother left. He had waited for her in the study as he always did. His father came in and said she’d gone and would never come back.
He hadn’t understood his father’s blunt revelation. He sat on the chair and tried to absorb the words, until his father grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him off to practice. It didn’t seem possible that his mother would no longer be in his life. Light and love left that morning and hadn’t returned until Leticia came to Stokebrook.
And now Leticia might also decide to leave. How was he to survive that? Give him a fight, a face-off with his fists, or stare down a pistol barrel, anything but have to endure his Cia looking at him with disappointment—or worse—pity.
The law said he could force her to stay, but he couldn’t think of doing that to her, of breaking her down that way. He loved her practical, stalwart will. She looked at him now with a combination of heartache and dignity.
“Bainbridge, I must ask you to not keep things from me. I know that a wife should not make this sort of demand on a husband, but I cannot tolerate deceit. Even if it’s done in a form of avoidance. Or omission.”
He had thought his heart tough and now learned differently. It squeezed inside his chest, as if striving to harden into stone, so as to deflect the hurt to come. He swallowed to find his voice, which came out hoarse sounding from the fear that clogged his throat. “I don’t understand.”
“Then I shall be specific. You haven’t said anything. Haven’t you noticed anything different about me?”
Confusion swirled, rendering his mind blank. She looked different? Other than angry with him, she looked the same. “What? Are you not well? I still don’t understand.”
Her lips thinned. She glared. Her outrage and impatience hurt. The coldness in her tone sank into his heart. “The pearls, Bainbridge. You haven’t noticed them.”
Helpless confusion returned, smothering his ability to think. He babbled the first thing that came to mind, feeble, but at least a response. “Yes, I did notice. They look well on you.”
She gave her head a tiny shake. Her small hands clenched into fists. “They’re your mother’s! How could you say nothing about them?”
“Mother’s? Are you positive? How did you come by them?”
Tears brightened her eyes. “Why are you playing this game with me? Hiding things!”
Desperation made him defensive, coarsened his voice. “Why should you think I’m hiding anything?”
“You can hide things from others, Bainbridge, but not from me. I know you. I know everything.”
The world slipped from under his feet. This was where she looked on him with scorn. At least she was too kind to be cruel. She was the opposite of his father and didn’t seem to know how to say hurtful things on purpose.
He didn’t know what to say, or do, could only cringe, prepare his heart, and wait for the pain to follow the terrible silence of her distress. It was the first time in his life that he didn’t want her company.
An old sadness rose up from where he kept it deeply buried when she asked, “Do you ever visit her grave? Your mother’s?”
“What? I haven’t any idea where it is. When father sent her away—”
“Sent her? The general perception is that she left.”
“Father let that assumption stand. He was always a difficult man, but with Mother absent, he gradually declined into what most people remember. The brute he became at the end. It wasn’t until after he died that a physician came to visit, asking after my health. He had concerns that I might have what Father had. Perhaps I should have explained this, but since it wouldn’t matter, I didn’t think it necessary. Father’s behavior wasn’t an hereditary issue, but the physician worried that I might have been infected.”
“Infected? With what?”
“The pox.”
She looked away, trying to avoid thinking about the ravages of syphilis, but hearing about it made sense of the old earl’s deterioration. “Perhaps she may have contracted it. That could be why your mother stopped writing.”
“Mother wrote? I never knew she had. Father, then Holcombe must have hidden or burned the letters. Another sin to lay on their doorstep.”
“I suspect that there will be more unpleasant revelations regarding his thievery as time goes on.”
Grasping for the lifeline of a change of topic, he asked, “You were always suspicious of him?”
&n
bsp; “Not at first. I knew about the stealing from studying the ledger entries. It wasn’t until he played that dreadful trick on us with Jessamyn Rawlins.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Before the wedding ceremony, Holcombe came to tell me that I had a visitor. He wanted me to see you with Mrs. Rawlins, to hurt me, but more than that, I’m sure he hoped to sow discord between us.”
“I see. So that when you brought your suspicions about him to me, he could claim some rot about a female inability to understand finance. If that was his plan, he’s not as bright as I thought.”
“Not overly bright but he made up for that deficit with conceit. What’s to be done about him?”
“I’ll send people after him. As I said,he’ll be found. I’ll deal with it when I’ve got him in hand.”
Studying him with her head slightly tilted, she stoutly asked, “Are you still carrying on with Mrs. Rawlins?”
He stared at her, stunned by the question. Defiant, she held her chin up, as if prepared for a blow. “Jessamyn? Why would you think that?”
His heart pinched when he saw tears slip from her wounded eyes. He ached to hold her and felt sure she’d reject him. The reckoning was yet to come.
Emotion made her voice hoarse and low. “I am neither ignorant, deaf, nor blind. You’ve loved her for a long time, but felt obligated to marry me. You only did what your parents, especially, your mother, wanted. Were you saving the pearls for Mrs. Rawlins?”
Frustrated anger slashed through the fear of losing her. “I told you, there is nothing between us!”
“Don’t lie! There was. For years. How can you deny it? Everyone knows about it. She’s beautiful. Graceful. I doubt there is a man in the county who isn’t in love with her.”
His frustration made him take a step toward her. “I’m not and never have been. If she’s beautiful, I never cared.”
She started to open her mouth and halted. Her shoulders relaxed, her proud stance dissolving. He didn’t like that she now appeared defeated, that he’d done something to cause her to feel that way.
After a shaky sigh, she whispered, “I suppose that’s because of Lady Ravenswold.”
Now more bewildered than before, he asked, “What does Cass have to do with this?”
“You grew up around her beauty. Mrs. Rawlins is shockingly good looking but no one can complete with Lady Ravenswold. It stands to reason that your spending so much time around so much beauty that it would eventually become less noticeable.”
“Leticia, I am completely at sea here. Do you think you could explain why you are so overset with something I’ve done?”
An odd expression changed her face from wounded to forlorn. “You know what I find most attractive about you?”
Her rapid change from one emotion to another set him further off balance. Afraid that he’d say something ridiculous, while eager for the slightest hope, he shook his head.
She said with a sad smile, “Your walk.”
He edged another step toward her. “I’m surprised but still don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You can’t see it. There’s something so purposeful about it. Striding. Graceful. Confident, as if nothing can stop you, and you’re always moving toward something.”
Careful, and aware of the irony of what he was doing, he took another step. “Cia, help me understand all of this. Why are you so angry with me? What have I done?”
She only looked at him, and asked the oddest question, “Bainbridge, what do you like about me?”
Her question froze him for a moment. Was it a trick? No, she could never be that mean, so she must really want to know.
He shrugged. “Everything.”
Exhaling a soft sob, she whispered, “Everything? Now I’m the one who doesn’t understand.”
He thought about it, wanting to be careful in how he would explain. “Except it’s not merely like. I’ve always loved everything about you, especially your courage. If I had to pick one thing, perhaps your eyes. But your hair is fascinating, red and blonde at the same time. Did you know that it sparkles in the light?”
He raised a hand to touch a shiny braid but she pushed his hand away. “Not golden, like Jessamyn’s.”
The sarcastic comment took him to the end of his patience. He did what he promised himself he would never do to his wife and shouted, “I don’t want the blasted woman! She was nothing and never could be. She was a diversion, and scarcely that, since she looks nothing like you. It sure as hell didn’t make it easier to pretend that she was you.”
Chapter 22
Stunned, Leticia blinked up at him. He thought about her when he was with the widow? She didn’t know if she should feel insulted or gratified.
She dashed a wrist across her cheek, while Bainbridge continued to explain how little he thought of the widow. Whirling emotions jumbled her thoughts, blurred his words. His taut expression reflected his frustrated desperation and outright fear. What was the reason for fear if there was no liaison?
She jettisoned her pride and recollected what he’d answered a moment before. What had he said he liked about her? Everything? And he had said it as if the answer should be obvious.
She interrupted his tirade. “Then you’re not disappointed with me as a wife?”
He halted, huffed out a long breath, and looked heavenward. “How can you be thinking such rot? I’m slavering after you ever chance I get. When I don’t have my hands on you, I’m wondering how soon I can get at you again. I’ve waited for years and years.” He eliminated the space between them with a long stride and wrapped his fingers around her upper arms. Lifting her slightly, he said, “You’ve taken Stokebrook in hand and returned it to what it was when mother lived. You’ve flushed the fox from its hole in my house and ended further stealing—”
“Then why do you think me undeserving of your mother’s gift?”
He gave her a tiny shake. “Stop it, Cia. I most certainly do not think of you as undeserving. Never have, never will. I never knew about the necklace.”
“Very well. I can accept that, since the drawer was locked, but you still haven’t asked for her letters. I still can’t imagine not reading a letter from my mother. I know how highly you regarded yours. How could you keep from holding it close, reading it? I would have. Over and over until it was in tatters.”
He withdrew, stepping back to stare out the window and rub a knuckle over his lower lip, as if punishing it. An errant thought distracted her from wondering what was going through his mind.
“Bainbridge, if your father sent her away, was it to protect her from himself or from the disease?”
He glanced back at her and away. “Himself, most likely. He and mother never had relations after my birth. That was the impression I’d been given from something he’d said while in his cups.” When he noticed the question knitting her brow, he asked, “What is it?”
She gave her head a little shake. “You’ve still offered no excuse for not answering a mother’s plea. Such regret and sadness, it overflows in what she’s written. How could you ignore her?”
“I didn’t. I haven’t forgotten her. Not for a day.”
She felt her resolve harden. There was an untruth somewhere, something not quite as it should be. “I can’t let this go. I won’t. There is something terribly wrong here. It starts with how you’ve pretended that she doesn’t live. For years, you’ve carried on with the fiction. What little I recall of her, she was kind and sweet-natured. Even if you can’t forgive her for abandoning you—”
“She didn’t abandon me.”
“Then there’s no excuse for never answering, not even bothering to reply to her letters or even read them.”
“You can’t know that.”
“All but one remained sealed.”
When she prodded again, he unclenched his teeth to answer. “How could I read them when I didn’t know about them.”
“That’s a feeble excuse. There’s a stack of them in plain sight in the
library cabinet. They were sort of shoved to the back but—”
“Because I can’t read!”
She stared, at first not comprehending. His explanation didn’t penetrate, because all she heard was an outcry seeped in heartache. Like a puzzle cascading out of its box and into perfect alignment, everything became clear. The reason why he’d fought so frequently at school, became so violent that they sent him home, his father’s unceasing insults. The reason seemed so obvious now—for the fury that lurked under the surface of his disinterest—the avoidance and shame she mistook for dishonesty.
The defensive glare he shot her way stung, but she immediately forgave. This softening must have shown in her face. He snarled like a wounded hound, “Pity is the last thing I want.”
She went to him, cuddled him close. He felt stiff and resisted until she gripped him tighter and rested her cheek on his chest. “Then hold me. Please, Geoffrey, because I’m ashamed for how I’ve wronged you.”
She felt something inside him break loose. His arms came up to enfold, impressing her into his chest as if he could draw her inside to soothe the old hurt. Gruff and abrupt, he asked, “When did her letters arrive? How many?”
“The last one was three years ago. I don’t know how many. We’ll have to search the cabinet in the corner. Please, help me to understand. You have no problems with eyesight that I’ve ever noticed. I dare say yours is better than mine. You have an exceptional memory for numbers. I’ve watched you tally numbers inside your head, so what is the difficulty with words?”
When he said nothing, she squeezed tighter, refusing to release him when he started to withdraw. After a time, she felt his resistance ebb. He took a breath before answering.
“I know what to do to read but the letters are jumbled. I can never get them to make any sense. I learn well enough when anything is demonstrated or from a lecture. It took years to figure out that the words and letters on the page are different from what others see.”
She rubbed her cheek against his coat lapel, comforted by the scent of horses and leather. “But your father made you feel stupid, when he knew you weren’t. Didn’t your mother know?”
