The Bride Insists (23 page)

“Ready for our appointment? All's set on the other end.” Simon could smell brandy on his host's breath. He was starting early in the day.

“Appointment?” Jamie had no memory of an appointment but was ashamed to say so. If only his head would stop pounding. “I'm not really feeling up to it. Perhaps another day…”

“Oh, they're all ready for us. And I have a cab waiting. Best just get it done.”

Get
what
done?
Jamie wondered.
Who
were
“they”?
Without quite knowing how, he allowed himself to be hustled down the stairs and into a cab. As they rode through the morning streets, he searched his memory for the reason behind this expedition. Finally, he pulled up some talk about money, and his unusual situation. He shouldn't have spoken of that. He couldn't remember what he'd said. At least the man was Clare's cousin, not some random stranger.

They left the cab in front of a narrow building that wasn't too far from Everett Billingsley's offices. Greenough herded him up two sets of stairs and into a solicitor's chambers. Jamie didn't catch the name properly, but the balding man inside had an insinuating, confidential manner and seemed to know all about why they were there. Which was more than he did, Jamie thought. The other two kept talking and talking, and gradually he understood that they proposed overturning the agreement he'd signed with Clare. They spoke of it as a simple matter, a sure thing really, easily accomplished without much fuss. All he need do was sign an authorization for this solicitor fellow to act on his behalf.

At some point during this explanation, a large glass of brandy appeared at his elbow, and he sipped from it automatically as he listened. It seemed that the action they proposed—he didn't quite comprehend what it was—could be accomplished quickly and discreetly. It was a mere nothing, beneath notice really, a simple solution to his dilemma. Badgered, cajoled, taunted—and increasingly befuddled—Jamie finally gave way and signed.

After that, everything was bustle once again. Papers were whisked away. Simon Greenough escorted him to the street and put him in a cab on his own. Jolting over the cobbles on the way back to his rooms, Jamie nodded off. The driver had to wake him when they arrived. Inside, slumped into the armchair before the hearth, Jamie let his head fall back, eyes closed. He'd be better after more rest. He hadn't been sleeping well, and he was so tired. Maybe his headache would be gone when he woke.

The next thing he knew, Andrew Tate was shaking him and practically shouting in his ear. “Wake up!”

Jerked from unconsciousness, Jamie put up his hands to fend him off. “What are you doing? Let me be.”

“There's news from Cornwall.” Andrew waved a letter under his nose. “Must be important, because it came by special courier. Wake up, damn you, Jamie!”

***

Not too far away, Clare and Selina were reading letters that had arrived with the same special courier. They came from Anna Pendennis and Edward Carew and brought the same worrisome information. “The twins have gone missing?” Clare exclaimed. “But how… where…?” She'd written the girls faithfully, but they hadn't responded, possibly because her letters had been superficial, she thought guiltily, never addressing the issue of when she would return.

Selina nodded. “Edw… Reverend Carew says that he has searched all the places he can think of where they usually go.”

Clare sprang to her feet. “We must go home at once and help find them.”

Selina nodded again and couldn't repress a wave of gladness. Immediately, she reproached herself. It was complicated to be granted your dearest wish through such dire news.

Clare turned one way, then the other. “We must pack. Will you tell Martha? And Jamie…” She turned back to Selina. “We must tell—”

“The vicar has written to him as well. I'm sure Anna has, too.”

Fleetingly, Clare cringed at the thought that everyone knew they had separate addresses. Then she thrust the thought aside and rushed to make preparations.

In the end, they could not get off until the following morning. There was a post chaise to hire and belongings to pack up. Notes flew back and forth from Mrs. Howland's mansion to Jamie's rooms, and it was agreed that he would ride alongside the carriage that transported Clare and Selina.

Their meeting beside the chaise in the cool dawn light was stiff and unsatisfying. Worry about Tamsyn and Tegan had superseded all other concerns. But beneath that anxiety lay the fact that nothing had been resolved between them. Jamie was grim-faced and laconic, Clare nervous and sad.

They traveled as fast as they could, and there was little conversation when they stopped in the evenings at some post house or inn. Dinners were merely an occasion for refueling weary bodies, and Jamie barely took advantage of these opportunities. Clare began to wonder if he was ill; he looked so pale and drawn. He was thinner, too. And he drank more than she would have liked. She noticed that he kept a flask with him on horseback, and his first call when they stopped at the end of the day was for brandy.

Jamie fought an uncertain stomach for much of the journey, eating little and assuaging his pains with sips of brandy, and more after the women had gone to bed. He'd so often imagined their trip home, but not like this. Clare spoke very little to him. When she gazed at him with her intoxicating eyes, he imagined that she was blaming him for leaving the twins with only servants to watch over them—again. More than once guilt had so agitated him that he nearly burst out that it was all her fault for running away. If she'd stayed home like a proper wife, none of this would have happened.

They reached Trehearth late in the afternoon and were quickly surrounded by a clamoring staff, all eager to explain how Tamsyn and Tegan had slipped away, and everything they had done to try to find them. The Pendennises were stricken. The newer servants defensive. Jamie felt as if he'd fallen into the middle of a street mob. The noise and confusion were maddening. And then the vicar showed up to add his contributions to the melee, enumerating all the places he'd searched and everyone he'd recruited to be on watch.

“Please, please.” Clare held up her hands, and gradually the group fell silent. “I'm sure that you have done everything you could, and we will hear it all. But one by one. Let us go in and sit down, and then we will speak to each of you.”

Jamie admired her calm, the more because he'd seen on the journey how worried she was. They did as she suggested, and gathered more detail, but the upshot was—his sisters had gone out on an expedition, as they often did. On foot, not on their ponies. No one remembered if they'd taken anything unusual with them, because their behavior had been so ordinary. And then they had simply not come back. It was hours before anyone noticed; it was none of the staff's particular responsibility to monitor their movements, as individuals were quick to remind him. Now, they'd not been seen for days, and nobody had the least idea where they were.

The day declined into darkness and grew late. Jamie met with the various search parties and suggested a few spots that hadn't been scoured. Clare talked for quite a time with Anna Pendennis, trying to discover what the twins might have been thinking. Edward Carew caught Selina as she hurried down a corridor and pulled her into the empty solar. They stood there a moment, holding a long gaze, then fell into each other's arms. “I've so longed to see you,” he murmured into her dark hair. “I cannot help but be glad you're here, even though the reason for it is terrible.”

Holding onto him like a lifeline, she nodded into his shoulder. “I know.”

He drew back a little so that he could see her face. “When the twins are found, there can be no more delays. I could not bear it.”

“No. We will tell everyone as soon as…” Selina's throat grew tight. She hadn't always gotten along with Tamsyn and Tegan, but the thought of the little girls perhaps lost in the sea or… “As soon as they are back home,” she finished resolutely.

“Tell everyone… and marry,” he answered.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

He pulled her close once again.

After hours of circular discussions and increasingly wild suggestions, at last exhaustion triumphed, and the household retired to bed. Clare and Jamie tried unsuccessfully to sleep, separated by a few feet, the panels of a door, and an obdurate wall of misunderstanding.

“They know this country so well,” Clare repeated to Selina. “And they left on their own. They took food from the kitchen.” The girls often packed a picnic for their ramblings. “Even if one of them were hurt,” Clare continued, reassuring herself, “the other could go for help. Randolph is gone as well, and can only be with them. So they must be all right.”

Selina said the same to the vicar, who agreed it must be true when talking with Jamie. Jamie assured the Pendennises. And the words went round and round the house, while searchers combed the area and turned up no sign of the girls. Selina had her own theories, which she shared only with Edward Carew. Tamsyn and Tegan had left no note, but she strongly suspected they had run away with the express purpose of bringing everyone home to search for them. The vicar agreed, and deplored, and refrained from pointing out that the travelers were all now returned. Yet the twins remained missing.

Jamie swung between acute anxiety and anger. Under the influence of the first, he grew certain that something terrible had happened to his sisters. A portion of the sea cliff had collapsed under them, or they had been robbed and killed, or fallen victim to some illness brought on by exposure. They were lying out there somewhere, off all the known tracks, feverish and starving. When his mood shifted, he railed at them for playing this trick, so much more than a simple prank. He imagined them hiding in some remote den and giggling as they spied the parties looking for them. He spent long days riding the land with the searchers, and longer nights soothing his lacerated emotions with bottles from the wine cellar.

Clare walked the nearby fields with other groups. She and Selina searched the twins' bedchamber from top to bottom, even though this had already been done. She canvassed the village for any word. The twins had to be getting food from somewhere, but no one admitted supplying them. Clare didn't think anyone was lying to her, and she refused to consider the possibility that the girls had no more need of food because of some disaster.

Edward Carew continually fought an agony of self-blame. He began to imagine that his encouragement of the girls' interest in the history of the area had given them the idea of running away. Selina did her best to soothe him, pointing out that Tamsyn and Tegan had been fascinated by the ancient stones before he started teaching them. But her reassurance had little effect. He would not be consoled for his supposed dereliction.

Trehearth became a house brimming with tension. Emotions hovered at a fever pitch, and the least thing could cause a wild reaction, in the servants' quarters as well as the family's. Shouting had grown commonplace, and all and sundry vented their anxiety in excessive blame for small infractions.

The storm broke over dinner on the third evening, as Jamie poured the last of a bottle of wine, which only he had touched, into his glass and sagged back in his chair. He watched the ruby liquid glint in the candlelight and fuzzily hoped it would bring sleep. He hadn't had a good night's rest since the news reached them in London. No, that wasn't true. He hadn't slept well in weeks.

“Drinking yourself into a stupor again isn't going to help,” Clare commented tartly. Jamie had always liked his wine a bit too much. But she was appalled by the amount he was drinking now.

“Oh? What exactly will help?” He drank off half the glass defiantly. “You have some bright idea?”

“At least I'm keeping my wits about me trying to think of one,” she answered.

“You! This is all your fault for running off and leaving them.”

His voice felt like a blow. “Mine? How many times have you left them here alone? If you had ever taken care of them properly…”

“What do you know about it?” Jamie shouted. Her accusation was like a lash on his raw sensibilities. “You think because you were
employed
to care for children that you have some special insight? I didn't require payment to watch over my sisters.”

Clare felt as if he'd really struck her. It wasn't the words as much as the fury in his eyes. Though she told herself that worry had driven him half mad, and that he was drunk, it didn't stop the pain cutting through her. “Neither did I,” she said.

She should intervene, Selina thought. But she simply couldn't bear the strident voices and the anguished looks on their faces. Rising from her chair, she slipped out of the dining room.

“You deserted them without a thought,” Jamie accused.

“That isn't true!” She had thought about the twins while she was away, Clare told herself. She had. She'd written to them. She'd sent them gifts from London. But it was a fact that her own concerns had overwhelmed her care for them. “And what of you? Did you write them even once?”

Jamie flinched from the question and flailed for words that would divert her from his failings. “You're a uh… unnatural woman,” he spat. “Want all the reins in your hands. Money. Tell everybody what to do.” He waved his glass, splashing wine on the linen cloth. The stain spread, red as blood.

“You are their brother, and you deserted them!” Clare cried. Every feeling lacerated, she pushed back from the table and stumbled to her feet. “Just as you always did. How many times? When you were all they had? Can you even remember?”

Jamie surged upright, rage roaring through him like a tempest. Enflamed by the wine, it pounded in his temples, raced along his veins. His arm drew back, and he flung his wineglass with all his strength. It shattered on the wall opposite Clare, bright splinters flying. Crimson dripped down the plaster in screaming runnels.

Clare ran—out into the corridor, up the stairs to her room. She locked the doors and went to rest her hands on the back of the armchair by the hearth. She was shaking all over. Her dinner felt like a ball of lead in her stomach, and her eyes burned. But she was too upset even to cry. How had her life come to this?

Trying to follow, Jamie grew entangled, somehow, with his chair. It tripped him, and he fell, bringing it down on top of him. He writhed and fought like a trapped animal, finally casting it aside in a flurry of hands and limbs. Then he crouched there on the floor, panting, terrified. What had he done? How had he so lost control of his emotions? At least he hadn't thrown the glass
at
her. He'd never meant to hurt her. Of course he hadn't. Just to make her stop flinging accusations at him, making him feel even worse about the fate of his sisters. It wasn't his fault.

Images of the twins' forlorn faces rose in his mind. He'd seen them, and refused to notice them, time after time. Now they spun about him like mocking ghosts. The shards of glass on the floor and the red splatter on the wall mocked his excuses. As the maid peeked nervously around the door frame, Jamie let his head fall into his hands. What was happening to him?

***

The next morning dawned in due course, after an anxious, sleepless night for most of the denizens of Trehearth. There was no news. Nothing had changed. Noting the overcast day through the windows, and thinking of the mud it would bring as she tramped with the searchers, Clare pulled her oldest gown from the wardrobe. She didn't care a fig what happened to this drab, gray garment.

As she pulled the dress over her head, she heard an odd crackle in the fabric. Running her hands over the cloth, she discovered the source, a piece of paper in one of the pockets. She pulled it out, expecting a forgotten laundry list or receipt, but when she unfolded the page, she found a note signed by the twins.

Grasping it with both hands, so hard the paper wrinkled, she ran her eyes over the words. She was at the bedroom door when she finished reading. She stopped and read it again.

Dear Clare,

The vicar is very sad with all of you gone. He's lonely and tired of people leaving and not knowing when they'll ever come back. We decided to help him. That's why we're going away.

Everyone will have to come and look for us. You won't find us though. Or Randolph either.

We're writing to you because you listen, and Jamie doesn't. Come to Moore's Rock alone, at ten o'clock in the morning. We'll see you and meet you there.

If you bring other people, we'll hide, and you'll never find us!

Clare's first surge of relief was tinged with a fleeting amusement at the way the girls used the vicar as a proxy for their own feelings. Then worry clamped down again. This note must have been in her gown the whole time. Why had they left it in such an obscure place? She examined the page again in a futile attempt to elicit more information about where the twins were or how they were surviving. It gave no clue. The note was written in alternating handwriting—very similar, but she could see the difference. They both had written it, and she felt she could almost tell which sentiments were whose.

Poised to move, Clare wondered what to do. She knew Moore's Rock. Tamsyn and Tegan had pointed it out to her on one of their walks. The huge boulder crowned a small hill and could be seen from a great distance. It was a walk of around two miles from Trehearth along a secluded path. Should she do as they instructed, or take this note to the others?

If she gave it to Jamie, he would insist on going in her place. It was true that he didn't listen. And after last night… Clare shivered. She believed the twins' threat. If anyone else showed up, they would stay hidden, and they'd proved how skillful they were at that. Still, it didn't feel wise to just set off on her own across the countryside, not after all that had transpired. She had to tell someone what she was doing.

There was one person she could trust to do as she asked. She sat down at her desk to pen a note of her own to Selina. She folded the twins' missive into it, asking her friend to keep these matters confidential until late in the day. If Clare was not back by then, she should send John Pendennis after her.

It was still quite early. Clare got out her old cloak and a thick scarf, added sturdy boots, and slipped from her room. Creeping down the corridor, she slid the sealed note under Selina's bedchamber door and hurried on. She didn't want to explain where she was going to anyone else. That meant the kitchen was out of bounds, but she could endure a little hunger if it got the twins back home again.

The sun was barely up, but it wasn't visible. Clouds scudded across the sky, and a cool sea wind bent branches and long grass. Clare clutched her cloak to keep it from billowing and walked down the drive to a twisting path that led away inland. She'd wrapped the scarf around her neck. Although it would be June in a few days, the air was chilly and smelled of rain. Hoping it would hold off, she trudged along. At least there was no possibility of getting lost. She could see the hill she was aiming at through each opening in the vegetation.

She reached the great rock less than an hour later. It loomed gray and craggy above her head. Clare positioned herself on the lee side, out of the wind, and set herself to wait.

Time passed at a crawl. Although she knew it was well before ten, she still found her anxiety rushing back. It warred with the fatigue that had become a fact of her life lately, and made the wait even harder. Clare stood by the rock. She walked a few steps in one direction, then in another, to keep warm. She rubbed her gloved hands together inside her cloak. She pulled the scarf tighter about her neck. After a seemingly endless time, she sat on a mossy stone and leaned back against the much larger rock behind her. Tented in her cloak, the hood up, hands tucked into folded arms, she actually found her eyelids growing heavy. It had been so very long since she slept well. She relaxed against the stone and drowsed.

The sound of her name woke her. Clare blinked, momentarily disoriented, and focused on the two small forms standing before her. Tamsyn and Tegan wore their boy's breeches and shirts under thick, rough jackets. The clothes were smudged with dirt, and their dark hair was bundled up into cloth caps, only a few wild tangles escaping. Their faces looked clean, however. Nearby, Randolph was tethered to a sapling.

Clare was overwhelmed by a flood of gratitude when she saw that they were unhurt and seemingly healthy. The terrible burden of anxiety that she'd been carrying lifted like clouds burned away by the sun. She jumped up and enveloped them in a breathless embrace, one to an arm, holding as tight as she could. Their small arms gripped her just as hard. Tears of joy spilled from Clare's eyes as for an endless moment they swayed together in loving relief.

At long last, Clare drew back. She was so happy, and… so angry. “What do you think you've been doing?” she said. “Have you any notion how worried everyone has been?”

Two pairs of dark eyes gazed back at her. Tamsyn's lower lip trembled.

“Where have you been? How could you do this?”

“We left a note,” Tamsyn said.

“It took you forever to find it,” Tegan added.

“I should not have had to do so. Because you should not have run away. Come along. Let's go home.”

The twins backed away from her. “We're not going unless you promise that no one will leave again,” declared Tamsyn.

“And you won't take away our ponies,” her sister added. Tamsyn turned to glare at her, then shifted her gaze back to Clare.

Two pairs of dark eyes pleaded with her. This had gone on far longer than they meant it to, Clare realized. The twins were on the edge of desperation. “I can't guarantee…” she began. Then she stopped herself. This was not a negotiation. They had bargained over lesser matters, but the girls could not be allowed to do so over this. “You are in no position to set conditions. Your behavior has been outrageous.”

The girls backed up another step. If they ran, Clare knew she could never catch them. They would disappear into whatever hiding place had concealed them for so long. Though she was sure they wanted to go back to Trehearth, she also knew they could be fantastically stubborn. Thinking quickly, Clare strode over and untied Randolph's leash. The huge dog welcomed her with a juicy swipe of his tongue. She held the leather strap firmly. “Randolph and I are going home.”
Could
the
dog
track
his
mistresses
if
they
fled?
she wondered.