Mistress by Midnight (27 page)

They were unbelievably strict. They didn’t let her go anywhere or do anything when she was home from school. He’d had to teach her to play cards, for heaven sakes—they thought games of chance were wicked. The Vincents spent all day Sunday on a hard wooden bench in chapel, expecting Bea to sit there with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes raised to heaven.

They even forbade her from participating in dance instruction at her school. She was forced to lounge on a settee at the edge of the ballroom and watch while every other girl in her class practiced with Monsieur Lucien. The way Bea said his name led James to believe Bea had a silly
tendre
for the dancing master, but his own school lessons on Napoleon were far too fresh in his mind to fall prey to the dubious charms of the French, no matter how well they danced or how long their eyelashes were. Girls were so stupid sometimes.

James sat down hard on a rock. He was spoiled for choice—the field he had tromped on grew them like big gray weeds. He uprooted a fistful of daisies and ripped the petals off, still
angry at his father, and now his mother as well. He wished there was someone to talk to, but who would that be? Sometimes a fellow was best on his own.

James had been away at school since he was eight. The masters were all right; he was heir to a marquessate, after all, had a courtesy title of viscount besides. At an early age, he’d learned to lift his eyebrow and look down his nose when necessary. But when his mama died, he had no one. His father didn’t come for weeks and weeks. Only Laurette was at his side for the funeral, and had wept when he could not.

She told him his mother was her best friend. How on earth could they have been friends after what his father had just told him? Women, like girls, were stupid too.

He would never befriend an enemy. Never. It was why he held himself aloof from his father, no matter what the man bought him or where he pledged to take him. The Marquess of Conover could not come waltzing back into James’s life like a French dancing master and expect him to open his arms wide in welcome.

James had pride. Consequence. He didn’t need anyone. Couldn’t, evidently,
trust
anyone.

He pulled up a clump of grass, watching the tiny black ants scurry for cover. He couldn’t sit here all day roasting in the sun, but he couldn’t go back to the house either. Not yet. He felt—he felt
sleepy
all of a sudden. Like a puling baby who needed a nap. His brainbox was chock-full of contradictory ideas, and it would be much easier to push them away, curl up and sleep until he was all grown up to make sense of everything. If that were even possible.

To hell with luncheon. He couldn’t eat a morsel, watching his father’s earnest face across the table. Aunt Laurette would be nervous
—scared
of him. Bea would wonder what was wrong when he stuffed his mouth with disgusting vegetables so he couldn’t talk. He would just stay away for a bit. Worry his father like he’d been worried.

Of course a few hours were nothing like ten years.

James dusted the dirt from his trousers and set to climbing the hill. He’d be up high so he could see to hide if anyone was coming after him from Stanbury Hill Farm. With luck he might come across another cave to get out of the sun and lick his wounds.

He and Bea and Aram’s sons had already found several on the property. Nico said some caverns went on for miles and miles, calcite crystal roads beneath the earth. Of course when they’d gone caving, Nico and Tomas had brought lanterns and rope, even though Bea was too miss-ish to go in very far. She was afraid of everything.

James took the starched handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. It was getting blasted—bloody—hot. Just like the summer his father had told him about all those years ago, when the grass caught fire, and the crops and animals and people died. The summer when everything changed. The summer that was the reason he stood here to feel the sweat trickle down his neck.

His eyelids felt heavy against the glare of the sun. How had his father managed in the vast desert, with black-eyed Saracens waiting behind every sand dune to slice his throat? Of course, the Marquess of Conover might have been mistaken for one of them, bearded and turbaned as he was. His father’s friend Mr. Bankes had sketched him into a corner of one of the letters he’d sent home. When his mother had shown it to him, James had refused to believe at first that the man in the picture could be his long-lost papa. That wild savage? Scandalous.

He reached a ridge and sat down to catch his breath and wipe his brow again. Below him was a deep green vale, the earth rippling irregularly as if the grass was a wrinkled blanket cast off in haste by a giant. A thin ribbon of water winked in the sunlight. And between a grouping of rocks, James thought he spied the mouth of a cave. At this distance it was impossible to tell how big it was, but it would be cool and dark, perfect to while away the afternoon in privacy.

He scrambled down the steep bank, losing his footing and sliding ignominiously on his arse, until he caught a root with a grubby hand and braked himself. His bum hurt like hell.

“Fuck!” he said, experimenting. Some explorer he’d make; he couldn’t even stay on his feet. He’d never be wearing this suit of clothes to church again, even if he retraced his steps to find where he’d discarded his torn jacket. James felt the back of his pants. They were shredded, but his hand came back clean of blood.

It took him much longer than he thought to get to the stream at the bottom. The route was uneven and there were more than enough half-hidden jagged rocks for him to stub his toes. He began to question the wisdom of his judgment at coming so far from Stanbury Hill Farm—he wasn’t even sure if he was still on his father’s land, and said the word “fuck” several more times, as men were wont to do when irritated. There was no trace of the regimented drystone walls that bisected the property, just undulating grasses and sinkholes and scores of rock outcroppings.

James’s face was fiery and perspiring, and he could smell something most unpleasant—himself. He splashed some cold water on his face, cupped his hands and drank greedily, and upon brief consideration, sat right down in the shallow stream. The burn on his bottom felt better immediately. He soaked his handkerchief and tied it around his neck.

There. He felt one thousand percent better. He stood, the water squishing out of his boots. His old nanny Mrs. Pulsifer would have given him the devil for his disarray, but Conover had dismissed her almost immediately after coming home to Ryland Grove. James had been upset by that too, but allowed his father had the right. He was too old anyhow to be coddled by a nanny during breaks from school, and the woman had been disrespectful, calling his father a “heathen” right to his face. Conover had just laughed—a frightening sight, his feral white teeth splitting his brown face, paid Pully off, and
that was that. Nico became James’s valet / companion when he was home and they rubbed along well enough together.

James wished Nico was here now.

But no. He had thinking to do, and couldn’t begin to discuss his family’s tattered history with a servant. James walked along the stream until he slipped under the overhanging rock and stood still, his eyes adjusting to the dimness inside the cave. The ceiling rose well above his head so he didn’t need to crouch, but the floor seemed uneven so he stepped carefully. Without light, he wasn’t going to venture far. His hand brushed against the pitted wall. “Hallo!” he shouted.

His echo was not endless. Arm outstretched, he followed the curve of the wall and found himself inside a small chamber, with a narrow passage to the right that he was too big to fit through. He edged along, stumbling over loose rock, until his foot hit air.

It happened so quickly he didn’t have a chance to scream. James pitched forward, trying to grip the damp wall as he went down, feeling his fingernails scrape at the limestone. Before he could stop himself, his body was wedged into a deep split in the cave floor, a rugged finger of rock tearing his shirt, the last article of clothing he wore that had not been ruined, and the skin beneath it.

Two falls in one day. He was a lummox. He tried to wiggle up, but to his horror, rock crumbled and he slipped down another foot. Wary now, he extended his booted toe but felt nothing under it.

How deep was this fissure? James swallowed down the panic that was building inside him. It wouldn’t do to lose his self-control. He’d been in this pickle less than a minute.

But what if he was to be trapped here all day? Several days? When would his father decide to come looking for him after their row, and how on earth could he ever find him?

Nico said there were hundreds of caves in Yorkshire. He’d read travel guides before their trip north, and had entertained
Sadie, Bea and him with stories of his own trips to Greece and other places.

James wanted to travel too. He had been promised a trip with his father if he behaved in school this year. But, suddenly, James thought he might never have the chance to go anywhere. Because he would never get to school to behave. Because he would die right here, jammed in this crack in the earth.

Alone and in the dark.

His face was wet, but he couldn’t move his arms just yet to wipe the tears away. There was no one to see or hear him when he forgot he wasn’t so grown-up after all.

“Fuck.” Somehow the word seemed less than satisfactory, but it was all he could think of to say.

I
t was well after dinner time, although this far north the summer sky would be light for hours yet. Con had moved restlessly throughout the house all afternoon, finally winding up in the library. An uneaten sandwich, its edges curling, lay on the desk just where Aram had placed it, giving him a look brimming with pity. Laurette had chosen to eat upstairs in the nursery with Bea, and he hoped they were deep in their plans to leave.

He had flipped through and abandoned a stack of crumbling books, not sure whether they reflected the tastes of his grandfather Stanbury, or his uncle. He’d have to tell Carter to box up the lot and burn what the mice and bugs hadn’t eaten. It was unlikely Con would be returning to Yorkshire after the debacle of this trip. The house was repaired and once the farm turned a profit, he could sell it off or save it for his daughter.

There had been no sign of James since he’d stomped off down by the lake, and Con was worried. The boy must be starving by now, with only his pride to fill his belly. Con had already sent Nico and Tom off to “bump into” the boy.

He had promised himself to give his son time, but when he closed his eyes, he saw James’s white face, heard his angry words, and saw his stiff back as he marched away from him.
There might not be enough time in the world to mend this difficulty.

When Con was a boy, he would have gone straight to Laurette if something upset him. James had nobody.

Con felt a searing pain in his chest. He wondered if it was possible to die of heartbreak, no matter how noble one’s intentions were. But now that half of the truth was out, he and his son could perhaps find the way to each other.

If not, life would not be worth living. He had lost Laurette. He’d never had James to begin with.

Con was in a hell of his own making. The choice he made at twenty had poisoned whatever future he had with his only son. It had taken him a night halfway across the world to realize it.

Con’s heart squeezed. He had done to his own son what had been done to him. He had mastered the fury he felt toward his uncle and the Berrymans some years ago. His pride had been nicked, his love thwarted. He had seen too much of the world now to imagine himself the center of the universe.

He had been faithful writing to James, but had purposefully made himself a nomad with no fixed address. Perhaps half the missives he had sent had been lost or delivered months late. Marianna had probably turned the boy’s mind against him, and who could blame her? Con had deserted her, and worse, had abandoned his son.

And now his son had abandoned him. He looked up from his melancholy thoughts to see Beatrix standing in the doorway.

“May I come in, my lord?”

“Of course, Bea. You are a welcome diversion.”

“Cousin Laurette tells me we are to leave tomorrow instead of Tuesday. I just came to say good-bye. And to thank you. I’ve had a lovely time.” She smiled shyly up at him.

She was so lovely herself, all pale copper hair and sun
blushed cheeks, a different child entirely from the first time he met her at school. “I have an idea, Bea. I’d like to give you the portrait of my mother, but not until it’s cleaned and stitched.”

A look of uncertainty crossed her face. “Are you sure, Lord Conover? That doesn’t seem right. And Mama and Papa—well, the picture is rather large and our house is small. I don’t think they’ll know what to do with it.”

“I’m sure your cousin Laurette can keep it for you at Vincent Lodge until you grow up with a house of your own. That old place has plenty of room.”
And she can look at it when she misses you.

“Thank you, Lord Conover. That’s very generous of you. You’ve been awfully kind to me.”

He heard the unspoken Why? “I know you mean a great deal to your cousin. Your summer visits mean the world to her. She is—she is my oldest friend, you know. I’ve known her since she tugged on my coattails, and I’ve been chasing after her ever since.”

That was too much, too close to the truth. But Bea took his words in placid fashion.

“I have known James a long while too, although we were never so close as you and Cousin Laurette. But we have become better friends since coming to Stanbury Hill Farm. I want to say good-bye to him too until next year. Where is he?”

Con winced. “I’m afraid he and I had a bit of an argument. Nothing serious,” he lied. “He’ll be home soon, I’m sure.”

Suddenly he doubted the veracity of his words. James would
not
be home. It had been hours, and the golden ball of sun was dropping behind the peaks. His son had run away.

Con sprang out of his chair. “If you will excuse me, Bea, there’s something I’ve just remembered.”