Forgotten Destiny

by Forgotten Destiny (retail) (epub)

  ‘You came to the rectory!’ I exclaimed. ‘You came to my grandparents’ home?’

  ‘Well, of course – what else would I do? I intended to marry you at once, before our child was born a bastard, as I thought, and set up a home for us and your mother too. Instead I was greeted with the news that you were both dead. Your mother in the accident itself, you in childbirth, immediately following. But the child, they told me, had survived. A little girl. And they would be much obliged if I would relieve them of the care and responsibility of her.’

  His voice was hard and angry now, the words clipped, and they carried all the more weight for it. I was glad I was sitting, for all the strength that remained in me seemed to leave my body in a rush, and for a moment my mind was a terrifying blank.

  ‘They said what?’ I whispered.

  ‘That you had survived the accident, but died in childbirth,’ he repeated. ‘That they were caring for your baby, but had no wish to continue to do so. That if I was the father, the responsibility for it was mine. Somehow they must have kept her existence a secret, I suppose, and they saw their chance to be rid of her so that they would never be forced to admit to what, I suppose, they saw as the evidence of your disgrace. I think they were even afraid I might refuse to take the babe, and they would be left with somehow explaining her away to your grandfather’s parishioners and their friends. But they need have had no fears on that score. Devastated as I was by the terrible news of your death, the baby was undoubtedly mine, and I had not the slightest intention of leaving her with what were, to me, strangers. She was my flesh and blood – and besides that, she was all I had left of you. The woman I had loved, and thought I had lost for all time. When I left that accursed house, I took our baby with me.’

  His words seemed to hover in the air between us, in the vacuum that was my conscious mind. It was beyond belief, all of it, and yet it had the unmistakable ring of truth. I felt it in every bone. Why should he invent such a story if it were not true? And it all fitted together, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place. My grandparents’ reluctance to tell me anything about my past. Aunt Linnie’s mysterious allusions to things she was not supposed to talk to me about. The family’s eagerness to marry me to a suitable man. And, terrible though the thing they had done was, yet I could believe it of them. They would not have thought it so terrible. They were so concerned with propriety and respectability, they would no doubt have seen it as saving me from myself, from a life ruined by scandal. It is for the best, I could almost hear my grandfather explaining himself, and Grandmama adding: We were only thinking of what was best for you, Davina. Oh yes, they were quite capable of persuading themselves that what they did, they did for my sake, when in reality it was for their own.

  But even given that I accepted the story thus far, yet it raised so many unanswered questions.

  ‘Why should they tell you I was dead?’ I asked in a whisper. ‘Why did they not pass on the responsibility for me, as well as the baby, to you?’

  Richard Wells lifted his shoulders in an impatient shrug.

  ‘You will have to ask them that, Rowan. I imagine they thought I was the man who had ruined you, and you were better off without me. That you would have a fresh start in life. It was very convenient for them that you had no memory of me – or having given birth either.’

  ‘But how could I have given birth and not know it?’ I gave a small, bewildered shake of my head. ‘Childbirth, from what I have heard, is very hard work, as well as being painful. If I were unconscious…?’

  I broke off, aware that ladies did not talk of such things with gentlemen, even gentlemen with whom they were intimate – and for all that Richard Wells claimed we had been lovers – and I believed him – I had no memory of it at all, nothing beyond our recent brief encounters. But surely what he had told me meant there were more important things than the conventions my grandparents had schooled into me. And did I want to be like them? So inhibited that I was prepared to do anything, sacrifice everything, so as to be seen as respectable in the eyes of the world?

  ‘If I were unconscious, how could I manage to bring the baby?’ I finished, my cheeks turning pink as I spoke the words.

  Richard Wells did not appear to be in the least discomfited by my indelicacy. He did not even appear to notice it.

  ‘I’ve wondered that myself. Rowan. I can only think you were not unconscious at that time, or at least had periods when you were not. You were in the black hole, but able to obey the commands of your body – and whoever delivered your baby.’

  ‘But…’ The thought occurred to me that if my memory loss had been caused by the accident, then, if I had been conscious, even for a short period, at the time of giving birth, I should be able to remember it. But the fact was I could not, and there were more pressing questions at the moment. Questions about the child. My child, if this incredible story were to be believed.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘How were you able to care for an infant?’

  ‘I followed the same instinct as your mother did,’ he said evenly. ‘I looked to my own parents for assistance. But I was more fortunate, as I knew I would be. My parents are not narrow-minded and hypocritical as your grandparents are. They are not ashamed to admit to a child born out of wedlock.’

  ‘Perhaps they can afford to care less about the opinions of others,’ I said, strangely, perhaps, in the light of all I had been told, flying to my grandparents’ defence. ‘When you have money and position, it’s easier to flout public opinion. My grandfather’s standing depends on him being seen as a moral man, who lives a life beyond reproach.’

  ‘I would hardly have thought his behaviour in keeping with Christian morality or Christian charity,’ Richard Wells said coldly. ‘Lying, turning over his own flesh and blood to a man he clearly thought a rogue and a scoundrel, is scarcely what one would expect of a man who truly tried to lead a good life. But then, I dare say it’s not uncommon for men of the cloth to care more about appearances than substance. Better to be thought pious and perfect than to be honest and flawed. I’m sorry if I sound harsh, but I cannot be as magnanimous as you seem to be, Rowan. I shall never be able to forgive them for what they did. Not for foisting Alice on to me – she has been a joy and a blessing, and I dread to think what might have become of her if I had not knocked upon the rectory door that day. But to tell me you were dead, when in fact you lay sick upstairs, and to separate you from your child and never even make you aware of her existence – no, I can never forgive them for that.’

  ‘And she has thrived with your parents?’ I asked. ‘She is well and happy?’

  ‘She is indeed,’ he said. ‘She is a delightful little girl, sunny-natured and pretty as a picture. But you saw that for yourself on the day of your marriage.’

  ‘And can I… may I see her again?’

  ‘Oh Rowan, you don’t know how good it is to hear you say that!’ He set down his glass, sat down on the chaise beside me and took my hands in his. Warmth ran through my veins from where his fingers touched; for a heady moment I thought he was going to take me in his arms and kiss me as he had on the night of Mr Paterson’s reception.

  He did not. Instead his eyes, narrowed and serious, sought mine.

  ‘Are you prepared, then, to leave Mr Paterson, defy convention, and come to live with us? As my wife, and Alice’s mother? As a family?’

  Breath caught in my throat; a great void seemed to be opening up before me.

  ‘Are you, Rowan?’ he persisted. ‘Before I take you to her, I must have your word.’

  I was slipping, sliding, the earth on which I stood nothing but loose pebbles beneath my feet. Behind me, a mountain, steep, impassable. Before me, the chasm.

  The certainty that he was telling the truth was gone, suddenly, as if it had never been. Was this all an elaborate ploy to get me back into his clutches? Was he playing on my emotions, using the most primal instincts of any woman to win me back? Could he be that ruthless, as Theo had claimed he was? Ruthless and
evil? Oh, I found myself attracted to him, there was no way of denying that, and perhaps I had been attracted to him before. Perhaps that was the root of all the trouble. For just because I was attracted to him – even if I had loved him – that did not mean I had given my heart wisely.

  And now he was issuing me with an ultimatum. I must agree to leave Mr Paterson and go to him; he would not allow me to see the child he claimed was mine unless I did so. Evidence, surely, that possessing me was the most important thing to him.

  I wanted to see her, of course, with every fibre of my being, this child of whom I had no recollection at all beyond that brief glimpse of her in his arms. I ached to see her with a longing that was physically painful. But I was also afraid, desperately, paralysingly afraid. Of the strength of my own emotions. Of the strength of his. Of the enormous step into the unknown that he was asking me to take, blindly, suddenly, with no opportunity to consider the implications. And heaven alone knew, with a new life beginning inside me, there was much to consider.

  ‘That is terribly unfair!’ I burst out. ‘You can’t expect me to give you my word on something so momentous just like that!’

  ‘Surely it’s simple enough?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Either you want us as we want you, or you do not. And as for being unfair, do you think it would be fair to Alice to come back into her life and then disappear again? She may at present lack a mother, but at least she has security and stability. I won’t see that eroded. That is why I am insisting on some commitment from you before I can allow such a meeting.’

  ‘But she need not know who I am for the present,’ I said desperately. ‘She need know nothing. I could be just a friend. But oh, I do want to see her so much!’

  His face hardened; those hazel eyes bored into mine for a moment, and I thought he was about to refuse me, point blank, unwilling, no doubt, to give up the bargaining position into which he had manoeuvred himself.

  I, in my turn, held my ground. I could not give him such a momentous undertaking without having time to consider; he could not expect it of me. Why, I was still not altogether sure that what he had told me was nothing but a tissue of lies. And I had not only myself to think of, but my unborn baby. Nothing was as clear-cut as he was trying to make out.

  And so I held his gaze stubbornly, and after a long moment he dropped my hands and stood up, pacing the length of the room. Then he turned to face me once more.

  ‘You would be prepared for that? To give her no sign that might indicate you were anything other than a casual acquaintance?’

  I swallowed on a huge lump of nervousness that had risen in my throat.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Only, please let me see her.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said harshly. ‘Perhaps then you will know what it is you have to do.’

  The weight seemed to slip away from my heart. For a moment I forgot all the remaining problems in my eagerness.

  ‘When can I see her?’ I asked.

  And Richard Wells replied: ‘Why, now of course. She is out in the garden with her nurse. I will take you to her.’

  Eleven

  My heart seemed to stop beating.

  ‘She is here?’ I repeated senselessly.

  ‘Why should she not be?’ He raised an eyebrow sardonically. ‘I, at least, spend as much time as I can with my daughter.’

  The remark cut me to the quick. That, too, was unfair, inferring that I was deliberately neglecting her. But this Richard Wells was a man who could be cruel in his determination to achieve his objectives; that much I had realized already. Any tenderness in his nature was well hidden, though his concern for his child’s welfare, if indeed she was his child, was to his credit.

  ‘Well, are you coming to see her or not?’ he asked harshly.

  I stood up. My legs felt weak and trembling; no, not just my legs, my whole body, like one of the milk jellies Grandmama had fed to me when I was convalescing after my accident. Richard Wells had picked up his brandy glass to drain what little remained in it and suddenly, though I had declined a drink earlier, I felt the need of something to give me courage.

  ‘Could I have just a little?’ I asked.

  He frowned. ‘And have Alice smell it on your breath?’ he said censoriously.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t think…’

  And perhaps in my condition I should not be drinking, in any case!

  ‘Oh, I suppose she smells it on mine, and she’s not old enough to know it’s different for a lady.’ He took a glass, poured some brandy into it and held it out to me. ‘Here.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You are quite right – I should not. And it would most likely make me cough.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve poured it for you now. And in any case, as I said myself, it’s medicinal. You are very pale. I shouldn’t like you to faint away in front of the child.’

  I took the glass. The smell of the brandy was strong in my nostrils; it awakened some deeply buried memory. I associated that smell with feeling very ill, I realized; I took a sip and my stomach turned, and I seemed to hear someone say: It will make you sick, or it will pick you up. Either way you will be better. And my own voice, childlike: But I don’t like the taste! And that other voice, soft, loving, cajoling: Just a sip, my darling! For me.

  It startled me, that sudden, unexpected smidgen from my forgotten past. I thought that for the first time since my accident I was hearing my mother’s voice. Obedient to it, I put the glass to my lips and sipped.

  I did not like the taste, any more than I had liked the smell, and the strong liquor burned my throat. But as it slipped down and went into my veins I did indeed feel a little better. I set the glass down on the table and took a determined step towards the door.

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘Good. Your colour is coming back certainly. Now, remember, not a word to Alice about who you really are. This way.’

  Richard Wells led me along a passage to where a door at the rear of the house led out into a herb garden. As I followed him nervously along the narrow path, I smelled sage, rosemary and thyme, and once again, to my newly attuned sense of smell, the scents seemed evocative, though of what I did not know. The path led to an archway, covered with a climbing rose that had showered yellowing white petals into a thick carpet, and beyond the archway the garden opened out on to a wide lawn, surrounded by trees.

  And there I saw her. She was crouched down on the lawn, closely examining something in the grass, small fair head bent over so I could not see her face. Lady Avonbridge and a woman I took to be Alice’s nurse sat on a rustic bench close by, but I had no eyes for them. I saw nothing but the child. The little girl Richard Wells maintained was my child.

  She looked up at that moment and saw him, and in an instant whatever it was on the ground that had interested her so was forgotten. She was on her feet and running towards him, her little legs beneath her petticoats moving as fast as they would go.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’

  She threw herself at him, winding her arms round his buckskin-clad legs, totally oblivious of everyone but the man who was undoubtedly her father.

  ‘Steady, sweetheart!’

  He reached down and swung her up into his arms. His face had softened; there was no anger now, only love and pride in those weatherbeaten features.

  ‘Papa, look – look what I found! A flower!’ She was holding it up to him, crushed in her chubby little hand.

  ‘That’s not a flower. It’s a clover,’ he told her.

  ‘Clover,’ she repeated experimentally.

  ‘And the leaf has three parts to it – look. One, two, three. Sometimes, just sometimes, you might find one with four parts, and if you do, that’s lucky. A lucky four-leaf clover.’

  ‘Lucky,’ she repeated, looking from him to the clover and back again.

  Her face, I saw, was small and serious and round, perfect Cupid’s bow lips, small straight nose, fair, delicately arched eyebrows. And beneath them, fringed by long dark lashes, her eyes were hazel. His eyes
. She had his eyes, then, and to be truthful, I could see nothing of myself at all. But my heart was pounding against my ribs and I could feel tears gathering in my eyes.

  ‘Alice,’ Richard Wells said. ‘Here is someone I would like you to meet. She is a friend of mine and her name is –’ he hesitated – ‘her name is Mrs Paterson. Won’t you say good day to her?’

  She gave me a quick, cursory glance, then returned her attention to her father.

  ‘Papa…’

  ‘Say good day to Mrs Paterson, Alice.’

  Another cursory glance. ‘Day.’ She buried her head in his shoulder, feigning shyness.

  ‘Alice! You can speak much better than that when you want to,’ he chided her.

  She wriggled in his arms, little legs kicking impatiently against his ribs. I saw him wince, but he did not put her down until she said: ‘Papa – find me a clover with… with…’ Her small serious face was screwed up with the effort of remembering what he had told her.

  ‘With four lucky leaves? I doubt I can do that, sweetheart. It has to be a very special day before you find one.’

  ‘Try! Please try!’

  As he set her down, his eyes met mine over the top of her small fair head, and they were full of meaning. This could be Alice’s special day, they seemed to say, and ours too, no matter whether we find a four-leaf clover.

  ‘Look for yourself, Alice,’ he said. ‘You can easily count to four. Why, you can count to ten and beyond when you put your mind to it.’

  ‘Papa…’

  ‘I’ll help you later,’ he promised.

  Something moved in the bushes at the far end of the lawn – a streak of ginger fur.

  ‘Bessy!’ Alice exclaimed. The clover leaf dropped from her plump little hand, forgotten already, as she set off as fast as her legs would carry her in pursuit of the cat.

  ‘So now you have met your, daughter,’ Richard Wells said, almost carelessly.

  I could not reply. My heart was too full and I could only stand there on the lawn in the warm autumn sunshine watching the small scampering figure and feeling the whole of my being melt with love and tenderness.