Cherished

by Elizabeth Thornton

“I’ve been writing to Leon.”

  A silence was maintained until Emily had made a selection from the covered silver servers on the sideboard. Though there had been a marked reserve between the two sisters since Emily’s marriage to Leon, Emily was conscious that in the last number of days, Sara’s attitude was faintly hostile. She swallowed a sigh, thinking that what she was about to say to Sara could only improve their deteriorating relationship.

  Seating herself at the table, she smoothed her white linen napkin over her knees and said quietly, “I am asking Leon to proceed with an annulment, Sara.”

  Sara’s face registered not a flicker of interest. Her attention was all on the piece of dry toast on her side plate.

  Emily sat back in her chair. “Did you hear me, Sara? I said…”

  “I know what you said.” The eyes that lifted to meet Emily’s were flashing like lightning. “It makes no difference to me.”

  Emily leaned forward slightly to give her words due emphasis. “Leon will be free, Sara, as I shall be. We may each go our own way. It’s what you have always wanted.”

  “Leon and I can never wed.”

  The words broke the silence like hammer blows on a blacksmith’s anvil. Emily’s ears were ringing. When she could find her voice she said, “But…but surely this is what you both have been waiting for? Are you saying that you no longer love Leon? Are you in love with Peter Benson?”

  Sara shot to her feet, and her face crumpled. “I have loved Leon forever,” she cried out. “I shall love him to my dying day. Don’t you understand anything? Everything is spoiled! Oh, God, there is no hope for me!”

  She left the room so swiftly that Emily had not gathered her wits sufficiently to call her back. She looked down at her plate. The congealing grilled kipper and kidney turned her stomach. Pushing back her chair, she went after Sara.

  Her heart was pounding. She did not know what she was thinking. She only knew that she must get to the bottom of this. She had always accepted that one day Leon and Sara would be together. From the time they were children, Sara had come first with Leon. It was always for Sara that he reserved all his smiles and soft words. Leon loved Sara. Emily had never doubted it.

  When she pushed into Sara’s bedchamber, her breath was not quite steady. Sara was prostrate on top of the bed, sobbing her heart out.

  Emily lost no time in crossing the distance between them. Seizing Sara by the shoulders, she administered a rough shake. Later, she would be appalled at her own lack of restraint.

  “What do you know that I don’t know?” she demanded.

  The vibrancy, the vague threat in Emily’s tone acted on Sara predictably. Emily was the elder sister. Somehow, that gave her an advantage. She used it rarely, but when she did, she made the most of it.

  “I wrote to him,” Sara got out between sobs. “I told him everything. I told him you loved William. I told him you would want the marriage annulled. I told him I would wait for him until that day arrived.”

  Emily’s breath came out in a rush. “You told him? But how could you tell him when I did not know myself?”

  “Oh, I knew! I just knew! William has been crazy for you since the moment he clapped eyes on you! And after I told him that he had a chance, that your marriage wasn’t a normal one, he started courting you. And you…you…well, you seemed to like him well enough.”

  “You wanted me to fall in love with William?”

  “Of course I did! Haven’t I dangled a dozen suitors and more in front of your nose these last years? William was the only one you showed any interest in. And lately, it seemed to me that you were smitten with him, too.”

  Tears began to get the better of her, but Sara forced herself to continue. “But you would never do anything about it! You kept delaying and delaying till I thought I should die of impatience. I asked you to write to Leon, about William. You know I did.”

  “This still doesn’t explain…”

  “I received Leon’s reply to my letter a week ago. It’s here, under my pillow.”

  A single sheet of paper was thrust into Emily’s hand. “Read it for yourself. He will never marry me, not because he does not love me, but because…” Her voice broke and she burrowed her head in the pillows as a fresh fit of weeping overcame her.

  Emily moved to the long window. The hand which held Leon’s letter up to the light was trembling. She began to read his bold scrawl. The letter was brief and to the point. He could never marry Sara, he said, even in the event of an annulment. She would always be Emily’s sister. If he were to do such a thing, the family would be split apart. She had to see that. He would do nothing to incur her guardian’s displeasure. He valued Uncle Rolfe’s friendship. He would always love her as a brother loves a sister.

  Whatever it was Emily had hoped to read, it was not these words. The curious anticipation, the strange excitement that had been building inside her gradually evaporated. In its place, anger rushed in, not at Sara, but at Leon. He was too fainthearted to reach for the woman he wanted. He had led Sara on for years only to dash her hopes like this.

  Moving to stand beside the bed, Emily said, “Perhaps he will change his mind.”

  Sara’s answer was muffled. “You know that he will not.”

  Emily did know it. Tentatively, she stretched out a hand and touched Sara’s trembling shoulders. The younger girl shook her off and rounded on her in a fury.

  “It’s all your fault! You knew I loved him. You didn’t have to marry him. You could have refused. Uncle Rolfe would have listened to you. You can make Uncle Rolfe do anything you want. You always could. Why oh why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t it have been me?”

  To this there was no real answer. Why indeed? Except that Emily had happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Do you know what I think, Emily?”

  Emily looked at her sister’s pale face, still beautiful in spite of the ravages of her bout of weeping. “What do you think?”

  “I think you wanted Leon for yourself. I think you planned the whole thing. Why else would he go to the turret room in the middle of the night?”

  “You know why.” Emily’s tone was curt. She hated to be reminded of that night. No one knew about the dower house. What had happened there was so ugly, she had never brought herself to mention it to anyone. “I told you what happened.”

  “You fell asleep with Uncle Rolfe’s pistol in your hand, and when Leon came to investigate the light under the door, you thought he was an intruder?”

  “I explained it all years ago.”

  “It sounds plausible. But I don’t believe you.”

  Injecting amusement into her voice, Emily said, “Then what do you think happened? Do you really suppose that I lured Leon to the turret room in order to seduce him?”

  “Why not?” said Sara plaintively. “You knew what manner of man he was. You knew he had a roving eye. What happened, Emily? Did Leon refuse to marry you? Is that why you shot at him? Or was it always in your mind to use the pistol to wake the whole house? What I think is that you loved Leon and you knew that trick was the only way you could have him. You were jealous of me. You have always been jealous of me. And I can’t think why.”

  Her words were the result of hysteria. She did not really mean them. When Sara came to herself, she would be bitterly ashamed. Emily knew all that, but even knowing it, the words scourged her. Her face was ashen as she ran from the room.

  The Beaver Club in Montreal was unique among gentlemen’s clubs the world over. Its members were fur traders, gentlemen fur traders, that is, hardheaded businessmen, every last one of them. They had one other thing in common. A condition of membership in this select club was that a gentleman must have survived a winter in the wilds of the Canadian interior, more commonly known as the Northwest.

  Leon exited through the front doors and inhaled a great gust of fresh air. “I can’t believe what the lot of us get up to in those rooms,” he told the massive granite column to which he had attached himself
. He hiccuped and tried for sobriety. “Without a canoe, we managed to paddle our way clear through to the Great Lakes, and some of us went even farther.” And his arms were aching from his labors. He had also managed to consume his fair share of rum.

  The doors swung open and yet another gentleman fur trader stumbled down the front steps.

  “Is that you, MacGilvary?”

  “Aye.” MacGilvary evidently had no head for strong drink. He clung to Leon like a limpet. “Och, mon, just point my feet in the right direction and they’ll find their own way home.”

  “That won’t be necessary, gentlemen.” The doorman appeared at their elbow. His temporary absence from his post was occasioned by a slight altercation between two other gentlemen fur traders who had left the premises ahead of them. A piercing whistle was all it took to procure the services of a hackney. The directions were given and MacGilvary and Leon climbed into the cab.

  “Your sword dance was superb,” Leon told his companion with heartfelt admiration.

  MacGilvary beamed his pleasure. “It was pretty fair, if I do say so myself. But, och, mon, wasna the piping simply divine? I thought my heart would burst clear through my breast when the piper played our national anthem.”

  “National anthem?”

  “Scots Wha Hae.”

  “Quite.” Leon didn’t wish to involve himself in a discussion on the merits of the piping. Just thinking about it made his head split.

  “Are you going west with the fur brigades, Mr. MacGilvary?” he queried, deftly changing the subject.

  “Sadly, no. No this year. Some of us maun bide in Montreal to tally the profits.” This was evidently a huge joke, for MacGilvary convulsed in laughter for the remainder of the drive.

  He was the first to reach his destination. Before the door of the cab could be closed on him, he turned to Leon and said, “Ye’re no a Scot like the rest o’ us?”

  “Eh…no.”

  “Och, it’s a great pity.” Faint suspicion crept into his voice. “Ye wouldn’a be English, would ye?”

  “Certainly not!”

  The voice warmed perceptibly. “Is it Mr. Devereux the American, come tae gie us Nor’westers a wee bit o’ competition?”

  “You have it, Mr. MacGilvary.”

  Faint laughter. “Och, well, there’s room for everybody in the fur trade, that’s what I say. Ye dinna mind my saying that a man needs his wits aboot him tae steal a march on us Nor’westers?”

  “I don’t mind in the least,” laughed Leon, “and the warning is well taken.”

  He stopped laughing when he arrived at his destination to find that he owed the driver for not one fare but two.

  The house where Leon was putting up, just off the Place d’Armes, belonged to a good friend and associate who had left with the fur brigades earlier that week. In the foyer, he found a candle burning to light his way to his bed.

  He stood staring at that candle for a long moment before he picked it up. He was thinking that for a young man in his prime, a married man, there were too many nights such as this one, too many cheerless, comfortless nights where he had nothing for company but his own cheerless thoughts.

  There slipped into his mind a picture of his mother as she had greeted his father when he returned home late, as he often did, from some dreary meeting or other. They would linger in the foyer, and their voices would be low and intimate. Leon did not know why, of all his childhood memories, that one should particularly stick in his mind. It was a very ordinary, domestic scene. And it filled him with nostalgia.

  Halfway up the stairs, he caught a whiff of her perfume. It sobered him as nothing else could. Mrs. Barbara Royston was a very determined lady.

  “Paterson?” he roared. “Paterson? Where the devil are you, man?”

  This was a bachelor establishment and Paterson was used to making himself scarce when there were ladies on the premises. His master, Mr. Fraser, had trained him well. He appeared at the bottom of the stairs with catlike stealth, a not unexpected trait for a gentleman who had formerly been an actor. He played the part of butler with consummate skill.

  “Sir?”

  Leon’s tone was clipped. “Find a hackney. The lady is leaving. At once, Paterson.”

  The lady appeared at the top of the stairs, and Leon breathed a little more easily when he saw that she was still wearing her outdoor garments.

  “Barbara, what on earth brings you here?”

  She descended the stairs slowly, with practiced grace. Her voice was husky and equally practiced. “I have a parting gift for you,” she said and held out a small velvet box. Her eyes promised far more than the trinket in the box.

  Leon rarely succumbed to his need for sexual gratification. He had not been raised to be an unfaithful husband. Given his circumstances, however, there were times when celibacy became an impossible goal, an intolerable burden. Whenever that happened, he chose his bed partners with care.

  Barbara Royston had seemed like the ideal choice. In the first place, their affair must be short-lived, for his business took him to Montreal only one month out of every year. And in the second place, she was a woman who knew the score.

  Though Barbara had a husband, Leon’s conscience was scarcely troubled. Charles Royston was indifferent to his wife’s comings and goings, having established another hearth and home, one more to his liking, a thousand miles away in Fort William. Royston had formed a connection with an Indian woman there, by whom he had fathered a brood of children. This was no secret in fur-trading circles, nor was it uncommon, though such things were never mentioned in polite society.

  Knowing all this about the Roystons, Leon had embarked on an affair with Barbara and had come to regret it almost at once. The lady, he had soon discovered, lacked discretion. All Montreal knew of their affair and it was Barbara who had broadcast it. This was something Leon would not tolerate. It was over, and he had told her so. Recently, he had assiduously avoided any gathering where they were likely to run into each other. This had only encouraged her to send him notes and make an infernal nuisance of herself.

  He curled her fingers around the box. “I’m touched,” he said, “but you know I can’t accept it.”

  “It’s only a small memento, something to remember me by until you are next in Montreal. Please, Leon?”

  She wasn’t ready to give up. He had tried to let her down gently and had failed. Sighing, he said, very softly, “Barbara, I am expecting someone.” He paused. “A lady.”

  It took her a moment or two to grasp his meaning. When she did, her beautiful face became mottled, and with a choked cry of rage and a whish of her skirts, she went clattering down the stairs.

  Paterson, who had returned just in time to catch the end of the little scene, obligingly held the door open as she swept past.

  “See that she gets home safely,” said Leon, and rubbed the tips of his fingers over his throbbing temples. He hadn’t been raised to be ungallant to ladies, either, whatever the provocation. It went against the grain. But so did a million other things in his life, and he had done them anyway.

  He was maudlin. It must be the rum. He was thinking of his mother and of his misspent life.

  A faint cough arrested his attention.

  “What is it, Paterson?”

  “Mrs. Royston had her own carriage waiting, sir, and was gone before I could catch up with her.”

  “Thank you.”

  Another small cough.

  “Yes?”

  “About the other lady, Mr. Devereux, the one you are expecting?”

  “You must have misunderstood. I’m not expecting anyone. Lock up and get off to bed. And…Paterson? Thank you for waiting up for me.”

  Once in his bedchamber, Leon set about packing. He wasn’t going home to New York this time around. He had booked passage on a ship sailing for England. There was very little to pack anyway, for most of his trunks had been sent on ahead. The last thing he put into his handgrip was the packet of letters that had caught up with him some days
before. He paused and leafed through them.

  William Addison. It was a name that was burned into his brain, a name that had cropped up more and more of late in the correspondence from England. Sara’s last letter had made everything crystal clear. Only one person avoided all mention of the gentleman’s name. Emily.

  She was going to fight him every inch of the way, nothing was more certain. He grinned in satisfaction, that notion pleasing him inordinately. There were old scores between his wife and himself that he was itching to settle. For five long years, she had held him off, making him pay for that sordid episode in the dower house a hundred times over. The tables were about to be turned.

  He almost reached for the brandy bottle to pour himself a small celebratory drink. Knowing that he would suffer for it in the morning, he resisted the impulse and settled back in a wing armchair which flanked the grate. Paterson, he noted idly, had banked up the fire and the glowing coals diffused a welcoming warmth.

  His welcome in England would not be a warm one, not if his last visit was anything to go by. He had returned, so he had thought, like a conquering hero, like a knight returning from a crusade to lay his spoils at the feet of his lady. He’d done well for himself. Hell, he had excelled even his own wildest expectations. And he had done it all for Emily. He had told her he would, right after their marriage in Rivard’s chapel. She must be won over. He must erase from her mind that frightful scene in the dower house. He must prove himself worthy of her. He had understood that. Emily was a romantic, a dreamer. This was the sort of gesture that would mean something to his wife.

  His optimism had been misplaced. In his absence that childish antipathy to him had, if anything, strengthened. Emily did not want Leon Devereux within a mile of her. If her guardian had been anyone else but the man to whom he owed his very life, he would have soon put a stop to her foolishness. But Rolfe was her guardian, and he had promised Rolfe to stay his hand until Emily came of age. That day was almost upon them.

  It was inevitable that Rolfe would try to protect her. His two nieces had been orphaned at a tender age and he was used to shielding them from any unpleasantness. For years Emily and Sara had made a study of how to get round their guardian. They knew every trick that had ever been invented. In their different ways, they were both as devious and as wily as foxes. But he, Leon Devereux, was onto them, especially Emily. For more years than he cared to remember, he had made a study of her, knew every ploy she was likely to come up with. Her wiles would not work on him.