You Only Love Twice (12 page)

“Lucas doesn’t want you asking a lot of questions,” he said.

She bristled at this. “Why doesn’t he want me asking questions? Does he have something to hide?”

“Don’t be daft! He’s thinking of you. He doesn’t want anyone to upset you.”

“Well, I am upset! No one will talk to me, not even you.”

This startled a laugh out of him. “Have it your own way. What is it you wish to know?”

What she learned from Perry only confirmed what Lucas had told her. As a young girl, she’d been infatuated with Lucas and had relentlessly pursued him. As for the night her father died, Perry could not help her there. He’d been away at university at the time and what he knew he’d been told by others. He told her something else. Bella, he said, was Chalford’s leading light. They were bound to meet sooner or later.

This morsel of information filled Jessica with anxiety. No one had mentioned that Bella lived in Chalford. She’d assumed, hoped, that after her marriage, she’d moved away.

She thought of the girl she’d once been, infatuated with a man promised to another, a vixen who would heedlessly lie to get her own way, and she cringed. She couldn’t recognize that girl as herself and didn’t know
what she could say to Lucas’s Bella to atone for what she’d done.

The next time she saw Lucas, he was standing in the shade of one of Hawkshill’s tall oaks, watching footmen unload a wagon of supplies that two gentlemen had just delivered. She was dispensing fresh lemonade to the thirsty helpers, and eventually made her way over to him. Deciding that diplomacy would not work on Lucas, she asked him point-blank if what Perry had told her was true.

“Yes, Bella is here in Chalford,” he said. He accepted the glass of lemonade she held out and took a long swallow. “This is her home. Where else would she be?”

“I gathered … I understood … I thought she lived in London.”

“Only for part of the year. When the Season is over, she and Rupert always return to Chalford.”

“I see,” she said.

He turned slightly and gave her a slow, searching appraisal. “What is it, Jess?” he asked softly. “Didn’t you realize you’d have to face Bella sooner or later? And not only Bella. My mother will be here in a day or two and—”

“Your mother!”

“Didn’t you know I had a mother? I thought Perry would have told you.”

“The sisters told me, but they said she lived in London with … with a young relative.”

“Ellie is my ward. My mother and Ellie usually spend the summer here with me. Don’t look so stricken. As far as I know, my mother has no quarrel with you. But Bella—ah well, that’s a different story. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes when she catches up to you.”

This was said with so much relish that she was taken aback. In the last little while it had seemed to her that he had softened toward her, had even come to like her. Now she saw that she had assumed too much.

Lucas moved and she tensed. “Don’t look so scared,” he said in a different voice. “No one is going to hurt you. Not unless they want to make an enemy of me.”

“Fine words!” she flared, the hurt strangely turning to anger. “Don’t pretend you care! I’m not forgetting that you said you would drive me out of Hawkshill. You made all kinds of threats if I did not leave. You implied … oh … all sort of things,” she ended lamely. She felt perilously close to tears, and would have bolted for the house if he had not blocked her path.

“Does this seem like driving you away?” he said, gesturing to encompass Hawkshill and the transformation that was taking place, thanks to him.

“I’m only repeating what you said.”

“That was a long time ago, Jess. At least three weeks.” He rubbed his neck. “A lot can happen in three weeks. Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

“Why, Lucas? Why would you change your mind? What are you really up to? Why are you nice to me one moment and nasty the next?”

He had a stupid grin on his face, but he was looking beyond her. “Ah,” he said, “here are two gentlemen who are eager to see you. Jessica, you won’t remember Rupert Haig, but I’m sure he remembers you.”

She spun around and saw the two gentlemen who had been overseeing the unloading of the wagon. The one with fair hair was bowing, and she curtsied awkwardly. She had an impression of intelligent gray eyes and a warm smile, then Lucas’s words registered and she hurriedly looked away. This was Rupert Haig,
the
Rupert Haig whom Bella had married? Through the confusion of her own thoughts she heard his pleasant voice saying that his wife would be calling on her when things were more settled at Hawkshill. Meantime, Bella was donating an assortment of supplies—oatmeal, potatoes, sugar, candles, he didn’t know what all—which he hoped would come in useful.

Bella Haig’s generosity brought guilty color rushing to her cheeks, and she stammered out her thanks.

“And this,” said Lucas, “is my cousin Adrian Wilde. You already know his brother, Perry.”

He was the most handsome man she had ever seen. A lock of dark hair fell across his brow and his brown eyes were assessing her in a thoroughly masculine fashion. “So this is Perry’s Jessica,” he said. “Miss Hayward, I hardly recognize you.” He laughed. “Now I begin to understand. Perry did not exaggerate.”

“Perry,” she said, “has been a good friend to me.”

When she looked at Lucas, she could see that the provoking man had turned nasty again, for some inexplicable reason. The good sisters appeared then and invited everyone into the house to take refreshments. For the next thirty minutes, Jessica took part in a conversation of which she could not later recall a single word.

The boys arrived on one of the warmest days they’d enjoyed so far that summer. The countryside seemed to put on its best show to welcome them. Clover and buttercups bobbed their heads in the pasture that was due to be scythed. Honeysuckle trailed over low stone walls and exhaled its sweetness in a husky bouquet. The swallows had returned and they wheeled and dived overhead. The ever-present robins and sparrows had teamed up to form a choir in the topmost branches of nearby oaks. Even their pony entered the spirit of the thing. Tulip pricked her ears, crossed the pasture at a slow trot and neighed a welcome as she reached the fence post.

Everyone was milling around the yard talking and laughing at once as the boys, with their scrubbed faces and in their Sunday best, spilled out of the two hired carriages that had just arrived from London. Sister Brigid was one of the first to alight. There were also two young priests who would be moving on once the boys were delivered.

The boys had almost immediately let fly with a barrage of questions.

“Sister Martha, why aren’t you wearing your robe?” “Joseph, is it true you’re going to teach us ’ow to be farmers?”

“Sister Elvira, where’s the privy? I’s got to use the privy.”

“I’m starved. Where’s the grub?”

“I wants to ride the ’orse. Sister Dolores, can I ride the ’orser?”

They did not stop talking as they trooped into the house. The ride from London had been a grand adventure. Such luxury! Such comfort! Such convenience! With a chamber pot under the seat! This last had obviously been the greatest marvel they’d ever encountered as Sister Brigid confirmed with a roll of her eyes. Jessica laughed. She felt as excited as the boys, and she was glad that the young nun was to be part of their little community. Jessica genuinely liked this young novice. She’d never heard Sister Brigid complain, never heard her gossip about another nun. She was by nature shy, but she also knew when to stand her ground.

It was an hour before they could all catch their breaths, an hour of arguing over who should sleep where, of stowing belongings and washing the grime of the journey from little hands and faces. And when they finally took their places at the trestle tables that had been pushed together to make one long table in Hawkshill’s main parlor, a lump formed in Jessica’s throat. Her eyes traveled over the little faces that glowed with anticipation and she would not have recognized them as belonging to the same boys who had been brought to the convent so short a time ago.

The boys were between seven and ten years old but they looked younger. They were small for their age, and their thin, undersized bodies had been in great demand by masters who had used them as chimney sweeps or sewer
boys. Until they’d been rescued by the nuns, these children had rarely seen the light of day. They’d been abused or abandoned by their parents, easy prey for unscrupulous men.

But they were in safe hands now. She shifted her gaze to take in the sisters and Joseph and her heart swelled with gratitude. They looked rather comical, Joseph with his toothless grin and the sisters like crows in their black robes, but their looks were deceiving. They were saints and they were warriors rolled into one. She’d found a safe harbor with them, and so would these boys.

That thought stayed with her through the hubbub of dinner and the quiet time of vespers. Later, when the children were sleeping, she donned her shawl and slipped away to be with Joseph, as she’d got into the habit of doing since their first night at Hawkshill. He didn’t say much, but what he did say always struck a chord within her.

Tulip was in her stall and whinnied to Jessica for her lump of sugar. Joseph was planing a piece of wood at his workbench. It was here, Jessica thought, that she felt a sense of the familiar—Tulip nuzzling her fingers; the smell of farm animals and hay; someone at a bench hammering or sawing, just like Joseph. Her father, maybe. Maybe this is why she liked this quiet time of the evening. Maybe this is where she and her father had done all their talking.

“Boys all settled?” asked Joseph, abruptly bringing her thoughts round.

She nodded and approached the bench. “They’re worn out with excitement. They’ve only just arrived and already they’re eager to be out in the world, you know, as apprentices learning a trade, as stable boys or in service, and the sisters agree with them.”

“And you don’t?”

She let out a sigh. “I don’t know. I suppose the sisters know best. But I can’t help thinking of what our boys
have been through. They’ve found a safe harbor with us. I’d like them to stay here as long as possible. They have plenty of time to learn a trade.”

Joseph picked up the board he’d been planing, held it at arm’s length and examined it from all angles. “Harbors are good,” he said.

“My thought exactly.”

“But ships weren’t built for harbors.” He put down the plank, looked at Jessica and gave her a toothless grin. “Ships be meant to sail the ocean, whatever the dangers. Our boys knows this.”

She could almost hear the chord strike within her.

CHAPTER
9

H
er parents’ grave was in Saint Luke’s churchyard on the outskirts of town. The headstone was a small square of granite, with nothing inscribed on it but names and dates. The plot was well kept, but there were no flowers or plants adorning it. It didn’t look neglected, but it didn’t have the little touches that the other graves had—a stone vase, an urn, an ornament—to make it look loved. It brought a lump to her throat.

Jessica had brought flowers with her, white daisies that grew in profusion around the foundations of Hawkshill. Kneeling down, she set them in front of the headstone. Mary Hayward, her mother, had died at the age of twenty-six, when she was only three. Her father had been close to fifty when he’d died. She knew very little about their life together, but she knew more now than she’d known a few days ago. Sister Brigid had discovered an old box in the attic, and the box contained her father’s effects.

There was nothing of value in the box, but Jessica
would not have parted with its contents for a king’s ransom. There were books and papers and other odds and ends that were of little interest except that they’d once belonged to her father. What she treasured most were her father’s watch with his initials inscribed on the back, his gold ring, and two letters he’d written to her mother, both from London, but two years apart. For the most part, they dealt with the buying and selling of horses. Though she was disappointed with their impersonal tone, Sister Elvira declared that there was nothing unusual about that. Men were shy of expressing their feelings on paper. The important thing was, he’d mentioned his daughter by name. “Tell baby Jess that Papa will be home soon,” he’d written.

Those few words had acted on her like a flood after a long drought. Something deep inside her had bloomed. And, of course, she’d turned into a watering pot. But nothing escaped the sharp eyes of small boys, and she’d been forced to tell a white lie. She had a trifling cold, she’d said as she blew her nose for the tenth time in as many minutes.

Tell baby Jess that Papa will be home soon
. She let the words turn in her mind, hoping to unlock her memories. One memory would do. But try as she might, she could not find the key to that locked door.

She trailed her fingers across the headstone. Perhaps there was no sense of recognition, but there was an affinity, she told herself fiercely. Her father must have loved her or why had he kept her with him? He could have farmed her out to some family who would have been glad to board her for a small fee. William Hayward must have wanted her with him. And on the last night of his life, it had been his daughter he’d been thinking of. He’d only done what any responsible father would do to right a wrong against his child.

She stood and stared down at the gravestone for a long time, then finally turned away to retrace her steps. Only
then did she become aware that she was not alone. A young girl was kneeling at a gravestone close to the stone gates. Her hands were clasped in prayer, and she was as oblivious of Jessica as Jessica had been of her. Suddenly she turned and looked up.

Jessica gave an apologetic half smile. The girl’s eyes were blank, then they suddenly blazed with hostility. In the next instant, she jumped up and hurried away.

Taken aback by that look of open dislike, Jessica could only stand and stare. Finally coming to herself, she looked at the gravestone the girl had been kneeling beside—
Bragge
, she read, two generations of Bragges were buried here, but, of course, the names meant nothing to her.