“Clearly.”
Gainford cleared his throat. “This will come as a shock, Innesford.”
Cian waited.
“Eleanore is alive,” Gainsford said.
Cian jerked, the shock impacting like the touch of a hot poker. He fought to ride it out and maintain a calm façade, for Gainford was watching him closely. “Eleanore is your sister, no? The one who…oh, I see. She was lost in that storm a few Christmases ago, wasn’t she? Or no, you’re saying she was not, then?”
Gainford lifted his hand in a halting gesture. “Stop it, Cian. I read your letters to her. I know about the two of you.”
This time, the shock was too great. Cian turned away, breathing hard. He leaned against the sideboard, as sound roared in his ears.
Eleanore was alive. She lived!
Gainford fumbled with the crystal on the tray. Cian heard the pouring of liquid. Then a glass was put in front of him. Gainford patted his shoulder. “Time for something more substantial,” he said.
Cian gripped the glass as if it was a life buoy. He sipped, then gasped at the hot sting. Then he swallowed the whole slug and put the glass down carefully because his hand was shaking.
He pulled himself together as much as he could and turned to face Gainford. “How can she be alive?” His voice was hoarse.
Gainford crossed his arms. “The storm washed her against the cliffs and smashed her around. The tides were ferocious. When she came to, she was on a beach nearly a hundred miles south of the wreck, with no memory of who she was or even where she was. She wandered into the nearest village and they took care of her for over a year because they had no idea what to do with her.” Gainford swallowed. “We thought she was dead. We even had a sort of funeral for her and for my father.” He hesitated. “After they were declared dead by the court, we went through her things. I found your letters then.”
“You’ve known…all this time?” Cian reached for the glass again, winded.
“I saw no point in raising it with you,” Gainford said. “In fact, I considered it cruel to do so.”
“Yet now you have a point that makes raising it worthwhile?”
Gainford’s jaw rippled. “The village suffered through a rare summer storm a few weeks ago, and the woman with no memory—Eleanore, that is—suffered hysterics in reaction. Then, when the storm was over, she remembered who she was. No one believed her, although the village mayor sent for me just in case. I brought her back to London and…well…” Gainford grimaced and turned back to look through the window.
Cian refilled his glass and poured a second, which he handed to Gainford. Gainford drink deeply.
“She’s alive,” Gainford said, his voice strained, “only she isn’t who she once was. The doctors have no answers. I can’t reach her, Cian. She sits and doesn’t stir even when asked a direct question. I thought…if she saw you…” Gainford’s expression was miserable.
Cian put the glass down. He ignored the swooping fear and hope warring in his chest at the simultaneous news that Eleanore was alive and still out of reach. “Where is she?” he demanded.
Gainford seemed to understand, for he put his own glass back on the sideboard without argument. “I’ll take you to her.”
Cian held up a finger. “A moment. There is something I must collect, first.”
* * * * *
Present day: Gainford House, Belgravia, London. March 1867.
It was the presence of the large gray stone Gainford house on Belgrave Square that made Belgravia a fashionable address. The Gainford dynasty was one of the cornerstones of London Society and the tragedy of the Highland Queen had only increased the prestige of the family. James Gainford was not yet married, although he could have his choice of any debutante, including minor members of royal families across Europe and no one would gainsay the match.
Gainford walked Cian through the marbled interior of the house, with the sweeping stone stairs to the two upper floors and the skylight overhead, which gave the interior of the house a glowing, ethereal light.
Ancestors hung on the walls. Statues hugged corners. The footmen wore wigs and gloves and short breeches and stockings. The air was perfumed with a delicate scent. When they passed through the arches into a very large conservatory, the perfume was explained.
The Gainford conservatory was famous for its size and its beauty. Now Cian could see why. The floor of the conservatory was a polished, sealed brick, reflecting the light of the mild day. The glass roof and walls were clean and clear, showing pale blue sky beyond.
And everywhere, there were plants and flowers, blooming despite the earliness of the year. There were roses and hyacinths, honeysuckle and even more flowers that Cian had no idea what to call. Some of them were deeply colored and their scent exotic.
Palms and ferns filled in the spaces between the flowers. It was a glorious abundance of a garden. Cian’s mother would adore the place.
Gainford took Cian down a path of the polished brick that led into the heart of the indoor garden. There was an island of brick among broad-leaved palms, where a pair of cane chairs and a wrought iron table sat. Behind them was a smaller, upright chair, holding a middle-aged nurse or companion, who had an open book on her knees, yet watched the dark haired woman in the chair in front of her, instead of reading.
Cian came to a halt at the edge of the tableau, just behind Gainford, his gaze on Eleanore. His grip on the leather box he carried tightened.
Eleanore sat looking at nothing and not moving. Her elbow rested on the arm of the chair, making the striped satin sleeve fall back. Her cheek rested on her hand and her entire body seemed to sag to the side, as if her spirits were pressing her into that position.
Cian could see nothing of the vital woman he had known, yet this was Eleanore. Her determined chin. Her fine cheeks. Her tiny waist.
Gainford turned back to Cian. “I will give you a moment,” he said. Cian could see the hope in Gainsford’s face.
Cian nodded. Gainford moved passed him and back up the path. Cian stepped onto the island of brick in front of the woman he had loved and lost…and now had found again…perhaps.
“Eleanore,” he said softly.
She didn’t look up at once. When she did, her gaze held no curiosity. For a moment, she gazed at him. Then a tiny furrow appeared between her brow.
“You remember me?” Cian asked.
“Of course, I do.”
He dropped to his knee in front of her, his heart thudding heavily. He would almost have preferred to have been wiped from her memory than to be greeted with her indifference. “Your brother hopes I can provide some magic ingredient that will bring back the sister he remembers, although you are already back, aren’t you?”
Her gaze met his. For the first time, there was a flicker of interest in her eyes. “So I have told James,” she said. “Why does everyone think that to be well, I must be as I always was? Why do they not understand I have changed?”
“Have you?”
Her gaze shifted inward. “I must have. I care nothing for matters that everyone seems to feel I should be interested in.” She held up her hand, so the full sleeve fell back once more. “Two inches of lace, or just one?” She grimaced.
“You never did care about the width of lace on your sleeve,” Cian told her. “Although for the longest time, you pretended to care because you love your family and wanted their approval.”
Her gaze met his. “I did?”
“You don’t remember that?”
She frowned. “I suppose…perhaps. Someone must tell me about the memory’s existence before I can recall it. Otherwise, I don’t know it is there.” Her frown deepened. “When I remember, it feels as though it belongs to someone else, as if I am only borrowing the memory. They don’t have any feeling.”
“You loved me,” Cian said, not caring that the nurse was listening to every word. “Is that memory without feeling, too?”
Eleanore’s answer took three painful heartbeats to arrive. “I don’t know w
hat love means anymore.”
Cian pulled the other cane chair closer to hers and sat in it. He put the leather case on the table and unlocked it. “Let me remind you.” He rifled through the folded letters, searching for one in particular. The content of each letter was engraved in his heart, yet he wanted her to read what she had written and see the words in her own handwriting.
He opened the letter and handed it to her.
Eleanore sat up a little, and glanced at the sheet, her gaze sliding along the first line. “What happened at the state funeral?” she asked.
Cian took the letter from her. “Let’s start further back.”
“How far back do they go?” She said it listlessly, her glance taking in the folded edges of the letters crammed into the box.
“Three and a half years,” Cian told her. An idea occurred to him and he looked at the nurse. “Please ask the Duke to bring the other letters. He’ll know what I mean.”
The nurse looked startled, then as if she was about to protest.
“Do you want your charge supervised, or restored?” Cian demanded.
Eleanore turned in her chair. “Fetch the letters as he asks, Jones.”
Jones moved down the path, her corpulent figure upright and her nose in the air.
Eleanore looked at Cian. “You think I need restoration, too?”
Cian shook his head. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with you other than you have lived through a dramatic year of not knowing who you are. I think…” He hesitated. “I think one of the things you have forgotten, that has not returned to you, is the mask you wore for years and years, to please your father. Now, what your brother sees is the real Eleanore, who never cared much for the life that was being given to her. Only you have forgotten the mask, too.” He put his hand on the leather box. “The real Eleanore is here in these letters.”
“And the other letters, that my brother has…they are yours.” Eleanore said it slowly, her mind working. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
Eleanore held out her hand. “Let me see the first one.”
Hope stirring, making his heart hurry, Cian pulled the first from the box and gave it to her.
* * * * *
Present day: Gainford House, Belgravia, London. March 1867. Some hours later.
A silent footman brought a tray of tea and sandwiches, which they drank and ate as they read the letters. Otherwise, they were left alone. James Gainford must have given orders for no one to disturb them.
Cian read the letters he had written, reacquainting himself with their contents, as Eleanore read her own and his, in the correct chronological sequence.
Her posture grew more upright as the hours drew on, and her attention strengthened.
At one point, she lifted the letter she was holding and pointed to a blotched line in the middle of it. “I remember writing this,” she said softly. “I was crying. That is why the ink is blurred.”
“I guessed as much,” Cian told her. “Only, you hate crying, so I didn’t say anything.”
Her gaze met his for a moment, then she went back to reading the letter. She felt blindly for the plate of sandwiches, and Cian nudged them under her fingers.
The light in the conservatory was fading when Eleanore finished reading the last letter, that she had written just before leaving for Skye aboard the Highland Queen.
She handed Cian the letter, which he folded carefully and put back in the box in the right place. His heart thudded uneasily.
Eleanore stared at the shadows beneath the palms, where dark dirt and little leaves of ground creepers showed. “Thank you for letting me read them,” she said, her voice distant.
Cian didn’t interrupt her thoughts with a useless acknowledgment. He waited, instead.
Eleanore sighed. “Now I have read them, I have to wonder…” Her gaze slid to Cian’s face. “Is it possible for someone to will themselves not to remember?”
“I don’t know,” Cian told her. “Why do you ask?”
“It seems to me that the wreck, the storm…they were an opportunity to forget about a life I didn’t want. Perhaps that is why I am so indifferent to it now.” She put her chin on her fist. “I must think this through.”
Cian’s heart squeezed. “Am I a part of the life you don’t want, Eleanore?”
Her gaze came back to his face again. “I don’t know,” she said calmly. “I didn’t remember you at all, not until you appeared behind my brother.”
Cold, invisible fingers gripped his chest and belly. “Because I was part of the life you didn’t want,” he finished, fighting hard not to reveal any of the hurt and fear he was feeling.
“Yes,” she whispered. Then she added, “I think.”
Two tiny words that made all the difference in the world.
Cian got to his feet. “I will leave you to think.” He picked up the case.
Eleanore sat up. “May I…could I keep them? Just for a while? I would like to read them again.”
Cian held the case out to her. She put it back on the table.
“May I…could I call upon you, Eleanore?”
She considered. “Not right now.” She looked up at him. “Perhaps later.”
Cian nodded. “Then, can I continue to ask if I can call on you?”
Eleanore’s mouth twitched. “Now I remember. You hate to lose.”
Cian shook his head. “I’ve already lost you. Life for me is as meaningless as it is for you.”
Her eyes widened.
Cian made himself leave, clinging to the hope those two little words had given him.
I think…
Chapter Fifteen
Present day: The Wakefield Residence, St. James Square, London. March 1867. The same day.
Ben studied his notes. “So…you returned to London for the season, last year. Burscough immediately reacquainted himself with his mistress in Saint Pancras—”
“I don’t know if it was her he visited,” Jenny interrupted. “I only know he was seeing a woman.”
“Because of the scent of Eau de Cologne?” Dane asked.
“Because…of the state of the…” Jenny felt her cheeks blazing. “There were stains on his trousers. You know.” She looked at Sharla helplessly.
Sharla whispered in Ben’s ear, for Ben looked baffled. Dane leaned to hear the whisper, then sat back. “I see,” he said simply.
Ben fussed with his notes, his own cheeks pink. “Then, he might have been visiting a prostitute, not a mistress?”
“He doesn’t have the money for a prostitute,” Jenny said, her cheeks still burning. “Not one who could afford enough liquor to get him drunk.”
“Does it matter, Ben?” Sharla asked. “You said Jenny’s actions were the ones the court cared about, not his.” Her tone stated what she thought of that limitation.
Ben ruffled his curls. “Jenny, did you meet Jack, after Burscough took up with a mistress?”
“Yes,” Jenny said flatly.
Ben nodded, his gaze not lifting from his pages. “When?”
“For most of the season.”
“Where?”
Jenny hesitated, thinking of the walled garden and the little house attached to it. Some of her happiest hours ever had been in that little house. She didn’t want to share that memory, to put it alongside the other facts of adultery and sin and wickedness. Only, she had written about the secret garden in her journal.
“At the beginning of the season, Jack bought me a garden,” Jenny told Ben. “In Clerkenwell, where no one knows us. There’s a house in the garden and the only way to reach it is through the locked gate, which is hidden.”
“Burscough did not notice your frequent absences?” Ben asked.
“He was never home, himself.” Jenny felt her mouth turn down. “He came home for breakfast one morning and told me I looked much better, that his idea of bringing me to London had been a good one. Then he changed his clothes and left again.”
“When was the last time you saw Jack? I mean�
��together and alone?”
Jenny knew the date without recall. “The seventeenth of July.”
Ben looked up sharply.
Sharla gasped. “Your birthday, Jenny?”
Jenny pushed her hands together and squeezed her fingers. “Jack couldn’t give me a gift, for I couldn’t take it home. He could not take me anywhere where we might be seen. All we could do was meet as we had for weeks, in the garden. Weeks of it had taught us how much we hate it.” She gripped her hands, making herself speak candidly. “I love Jack. Only loving him isn’t enough. We could not stand it a moment longer. I haven’t seen Jack since. I don’t even know if he is in London.”
Sharla’s eyes glittered. “You know he is,” she said softly. “He would not leave you to face this alone.”
Jenny met her gaze. “This is my fault. All of it. Jack should run as far away from me as possible.”
Sharla flinched.
Ben stacked the pages and put them in order. Then he sighed. “I know you don’t think of it this way, but you have committed adultery, Jenny.”
Jenny nodded.
“It is a criminal offense. Do you understand that?”
“People have affairs all the time!” Sharla protested.
“Usually, their husbands and wives don’t sue them for it,” Dane said. “Ben, a question keeps bothering me. You charge clients a lot of money for your services, don’t you?”
Ben cleared his throat. “I suppose, yes.”
Dane rolled his eyes. “Please move beyond your gentlemanly distaste for discussing money and consider this. If you charge a great deal, then it would follow that Stephen Crispin Spearing, who is in even greater demand than you, would charge the same or more, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Ben said.
Dane sat back. “Where is Burscough getting the money for Spearing’s services, then?”
Jenny gasped.
Ben’s mouth opened. He looked down at his notes. “Where is he getting the money?” he muttered.
“Not just anyone can afford a divorce,” Dane added.
“No,” Ben said in forceful agreement. “They’re messy. Civil court and filing fees all cost money, on top of the solicitor and barrister fees. Then there are criminal court fees and filings for the adultery charges. Then the petition to the church, which is likely higher than both courts combined. Only the very wealthy and well-connected can afford a divorce.”
Scandalous Scions Two Page 33
