скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Why, not at all! Thank you for your kind thought.’
‘Hmm.’ He liked his gamekeeper’s wife. There was a dignity about her he couldn’t fathom; that, and her way of speaking that lifted her above her class. ‘Daisy Julia, isn’t it to be?’ he asked, seeing in his mind’s eye the name and date inscribed on the silver christening mug he had already ordered from a Bond Street jeweller.
He left, smiling almost shyly, raising his hat, thanking her, and she stood at the door until he reached the garden gate, nodding her head deferentially.
Poor soul. Alone in that great house. Pity he couldn’t marry some war widow with children of her own; heaven only knew there were plenty of them around, Alice frowned.
She looked at the watch pinned to her apron; the one she had looked at so often when nursing, in France. Tom would be home soon for his dinner; would arrive promptly at noon because that had been the time of their wedding. They were given no choice. There was to be a service of thanksgiving in the church at two, followed by sports for the children and a splendid tea for all, the vicar had said. She and Tom had chosen to marry, though they hadn’t known it at the time, on the day the entire British Empire was to celebrate the victory of the Great War – and another reason, she had conceded, for not asking Julia to be there.
Alice raked the fire, then pulled out the damper to redden the coals, placing the vegetables on the hob to simmer. Last year, just about this time, she had been brushing her hair, twisting it into a knot, tilting her rose-trimmed hat this way and that before she was satisfied enough with its angle to secure it with a hatpin. A bride in waiting, ready to walk to the church, yet one year on she was a wife and mother, fervently grateful for something she thought she had lost for ever. Blessings she had in plenty – and a secret, still to be told. It hung over her like a confession unwilling to be made, because the penance might be more than she could accept.
Tom came home one minute before noon, dipping into his gamebag, telling her to close her eyes. She knew what he had brought her, had hoped he would remember.
‘Just to let you know I haven’t forgotten,’ he smiled, giving her the flowers, tilting her chin to lay his lips gently against hers.
He had brought her buttercups, the flower so special between them. He had picked one and held it beneath her chin, so long ago. Seven years, if you counted.
‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice – my buttercup girl,’ he’d whispered, kissing her for the first time.
‘Alice?’ His voice invaded her thoughts. ‘You were miles away, lass.’
‘No, love – years away.’ She felt her cheeks pinking. ‘I was remembering when you first gave me buttercups. And I know I shouldn’t be thinking back – not today, especially – but there’s something I want to tell you, Tom; something I promised more than a year ago.’
‘To love, honour and obey?’ he teased.
‘No. Something else I promised and I’ve made up my mind to tell you, today.’
‘And what if I don’t want to know?’
‘You must know, Tom. For both our sakes. What I did – it wasn’t what you thought …’
‘How do you – did you – know what I thought?’
‘Because I saw betrayal in your eyes, and it wasn’t like that.’
‘I still don’t want to know, Alice.’
‘And I still want to tell you. When I held our firstborn, I said it would be.’
‘Sweetheart.’ He reached for her, holding her tightly. ‘This has been the best year of my life – don’t spoil it?’
‘But you’ve got to know about the child, Tom – how it really was.’
‘You call him the child, always. He’s Drew, Miss Julia’s son, now. He’s a Sutton.’
‘Yes.’ Oh, he was a Sutton, all right! ‘But Tom, will you let me tell you? Not meaning to hurt you, but won’t you hear me out? I love you so much, you see, that I can’t bear to have this thing hanging over us.’
‘All right, then. We’ll talk about it tonight – there’ll be no pleasing you, until we do. When Daisy is in her cot, we’ll talk about it.’ He nodded towards the mantel clock, smiling. ‘And round about now, a year ago, you were saying, I will – so what have you to say to me?’
‘I love you, Tom Dwerryhouse; so much that it’s like a pain inside me, sometimes. I love you so much that I’ve got to tell you.’
‘And I love you so much, wife darling, that I’ll listen – but later. So does a man get a kiss, and his dinner, then?’
They sat either side of the fire, Tom with a mug of ale, Alice twisting the stem of a wedding present glass, gazing down at the last of the Christmas sherry.
‘Happy anniversary, lass. Thank you for Daisy and for the twelve-month past. It’s been good, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’
‘I know it. But will you love me as much when I’ve told you?’
‘Dammit, woman!’ He hit his knee with his hand. ‘Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?’
‘You said that tonight you’d listen …’
She rose to kneel at his feet, her hand on his knees, remembering the quickness of his temper, the highs and lows of his emotions. ‘It has always bothered me, Tom, that you thought I married so soon after your death – after they told me you’d been killed, I mean.’
‘Aye – and I’ll admit it bothered me, an’ all. When the war ended – when I got back to England – I came to Rowangarth, looking for you. I thought you’d have waited. Even though you thought me dead, I’d never have imagined that so soon after, you’d take another man to your –’
‘To my bed?’ she interrupted, sharply. ‘Make a child with him?’
‘Since you put it that way – yes.’ He winced at the directness of her words. ‘But Alice love, must we rake up the past? It’s you and me, now, and Daisy. That war is over, and best forgotten and all the misery it caused.’
‘I was in France, too, don’t forget. I saw the degradation of men treated no better than animals. But it can’t be forgotten until what it did to you and me is brought into the open, Tom.’
‘You’re set on me knowing, aren’t you? Even if you hurt me?’
‘You won’t be hurt – angry, more like. Reuben knew about it, and Julia. And Nathan Sutton, an’ all. They’ll bear out my story.’
‘Seems the world and his wife knew; everyone but Tom Dwerryhouse. When you walked in on me that day at Reuben’s house – why didn’t you tell me, then?’
‘When I’d just seen a ghost? When you were standing there, back from the dead? And you didn’t help any, Tom. You turned away from me as if I were beneath contempt – tipped your cap to me and called me milady. You knew how to hurt!’
‘I’d come looking for you. I couldn’t go to Rowangarth; I was dead – or so the Army had told my folks.’
‘I understand that, and that you were a deserter. You had to be careful, or they could have had you shot.’
‘Not any more. The war was over, by then. They’d have put me in prison, though – still could …’
‘There’ll be an amnesty for you, soon – for all deserters. The newspapers say so.’
‘Happen. But we are talking about now, and about you and me. I went to Reuben’s house. I thought he’d get word to you that I was back. I couldn’t wait to see you, touch you …’
‘And instead he told you I was married and had a child; that I was Lady Sutton, newly widowed.’
‘Something like that. It was as if he’d slammed a fist into my face. You wedded and bedded and though your being a widow made you your own woman again, I knew you’d never leave your son and come away with me, even if you still loved me – and it seemed you didn’t.’
‘But I did leave my son. I left him with Julia and her ladyship because Rowangarth was where he belonged – his inheritance. And I followed you here, Tom, wanting to tell you the truth of it, even then.
‘You’ve said I never use my son’s name – always call him the child – and you are right. I had little to do with him – I was ill after he was born. I wanted to die. I tried to. I’d been nursing Giles, you see. He died in the ’flu epidemic’
‘Died of it – like my mother did.’
‘Just as she did, Tom.’ She rose to her feet, backing away from him, returning to her chair, standing behind it as if to shelter from the fury she feared would come.
‘I had a difficult confinement, Tom. When my pains started, we couldn’t get the doctor. He was working all the hours God sent – half of Holdenby was down with that ’flu. Julia was with me from start to finish. She’d just delivered the child when Doctor James arrived.
‘There was only time to tell Giles he’d had a son before he died. Her ladyship was sitting beside his bed. She said, afterwards, that he’d gripped her hand, as if he understood.’
She stopped, taking in a shuddering breath, tilting her chin defiantly, wondering, now that she had started the awful business, where it would end.
‘Go on,’ Tom urged.
‘I had a fever. Doctor James said I’d taken influenza from Giles. I was so ill they kept the baby away from me – didn’t want him to get it. Julia was in a bad way. She’d just come back from France. Andrew had been killed only days before the Armistice and it was as if she wasn’t with us; as if she were sleep-walking, all the time. I thought she’d die of a broken heart.
‘But the baby saved her sanity. She had to look after him, you see – find milk for him, make sure he lived. By the time I was well enough to get out of bed he was six weeks old – and Julia’s. They’d bonded, each to the other. The child was the son she would never conceive and I was content to leave it that way.’
‘It didn’t bother you that some other woman had your bairn?’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It was like giving him away.’
‘Yes, it was. But I didn’t want him – didn’t want to touch him, even. When I was well enough to think for myself, I was even glad there’d been no milk in my breasts for him.’
‘Alice!’ He slammed down his mug, spilling ale over the hearthstone. ‘How could you – your own son? There must have been some affection for Giles Sutton? You must have felt something for him, or how could you have got that child?’
‘I had great affection for Giles – always. I worked at Rowangarth for his mother, remember, and when he was brought to our hospital wounded and more dead than alive, I asked Sister if I could stay with him. He was in another world – on morphine. They used to give them morphine, Tom, to let them die peacefully – those who were lucky enough to be got to a hospital, that was.’
Her eyes filled with tears and she was back again in France with the stench and the horror and the hopelessness of it all. Then she pulled her sleeve across her face, sniffing loudly, facing him defiantly.
‘Yes, I felt affection for Giles Sutton, I’ll not deny it, and pity, too. And I think I could have cared for the child, if it had been gently got. But that bairn wasn’t the result of love or affection, Tom. When Giles was brought to our hospital, I was already four weeks pregnant. And before you pass judgement,’ she hastened, ‘before you say what I can see in your eyes – let me tell you just one thing. The child – Drew Sutton – was got the night I’d been told you were dead. Your sister wrote to tell me. Julia was in Paris, on leave with Andrew. I had no one to turn to, so I ran out of the nurses’ quarters, half out of my mind.’
‘And someone …?’ His face was chalk white, his lips so tight with distaste he had difficulty speaking.
‘Yes. Someone. He smelled of drink; his eyes were wild. He didn’t know what he was doing – I’ll swear it.’
‘He must have!’
‘Don’t, Tom? Let me tell it the way it was?’ she whispered dry-mouthed. ‘We nurses were quartered in what had been the schoolhouse of a convent. There was a shed at the back where the nuns once kept their cows. He dragged me in there. I didn’t have a chance and anyway, I think I wanted him to kill me. You were dead, and I wanted to be dead, too.’
She walked across the room to stare out of the window, taking in gulps of air, holding them, letting them go in little steadying puffs. Then, hugging herself, she turned to face him again.
‘I fainted. I must have done, because when I could think clearly again, he’d gone. But it had happened – there was no telling myself it hadn’t – and I got myself back to the schoolhouse. It was dark, by then, and when I got upstairs, Julia was back.
‘She was waiting there, with Nurse Love. I’d thrown your sister’s letter down, and they’d read it. They were kind to me. Julia held me – then it all came out. Not just about you being reported killed, but about him, and what he’d done to me. Julia took my uniform off – it was all dirty and torn – and got me into a bath. Nurse Love wanted to tell Sister, have the Military Police arrest him, but Julia said not to.
‘She was livid, though. You know what she could be like, when she had a temper on her? She said to wait a bit – that with luck no harm had been done. She was only thinking of me. She knew I’d been through it before, you see.’
‘But she was wrong. Harm was done, it seems, and you passed that child off as Giles Sutton’s. How could you, Alice?’
‘Because Giles didn’t die, did he, though it might have been better if he had – with hindsight, that is. He survived to become only half a man. He told Julia one night that he would never father a child, though I think I’d known it, all along. I’d helped dress his wounds, you see. There were no niceties in those wards, in France. And she told him that life was cruel, because I was carrying a child I didn’t want.’
She looked into his eyes, hoping to find understanding there, or pity, even, but there was none.
‘Anyway, Nathan had been coming in every day, to see Giles,’ she rushed on. ‘He was stationed only a couple of miles away – an army chaplain, you’ll remember – and Giles told him about me and the terrible mess I was in; said it was on his mind to ask me to marry him – say the child was his. The baby would be the one her ladyship had always wanted, and if it was a son, so much the better.’
‘So you were glad to wed him, Alice – let him claim the child as his?’
‘Not glad. Grateful, more like. And I didn’t say yes, right away. I had this feeling inside me that I was going to hear from you or about you. I couldn’t accept you were dead, you see. I thought that one day you’d come back.
‘Julia stood by me. She’d wanted me to go to Aunt Sutton to have the baby and maybe get it adopted into a good home. Then Giles came up with a better idea – to marry me.’
‘And the rest we know, Alice. I suppose it was Nathan who married you and him?’
‘In the convent chapel,’ she nodded, eyes on her hands. ‘Just Julia and Nurse Love as witnesses. I’d not have done it, but Geordie Marshall came to see me. He was passing through Celverte – where we were nursing – and he brought me your Testament, and letters I’d written to you. Said that you’d been sent on special duties and that he’d heard that twelve of you in an army transport had all been killed by a shell. No chance you were alive, he said, but at least it had been quick and clean. I was grateful for that. I’d not have wanted you to die like some I’d nursed …’
‘And you got away with it? Didn’t you feel one bit of shame, lying to her ladyship – deceiving her?’
‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘It wasn’t me told the lies. I just went along with them. And they were white lies. Sir Robert had been killed – you knew that already – and with Giles not being able to have children, the title would have been lost to Rowangarth – passed to the Pendenys Suttons and you know how that would have grieved her ladyship.’
‘So what did you all cook up, between you?’ He looked at her as if she were a stranger; a lying, deceiving woman and not the girl he married a twelve-month ago; not the mother of his Daisy.
‘We cooked nothing up. So Nathan Sutton and Julia knew about it – that didn’t make them criminals. And the child would be born in wedlock, which made him the rightful Rowangarth heir – what harm did we do? Her ladyship was overjoyed, looking forward to it being born …’
‘And you? Did you feel grand, being a lady of title in the house where once you’d started off a housemaid?’
‘No, Tom. That part of it took a lot of getting used to. And I’ll admit I was always aware of the deceit. But it was Giles told his mother the child was his. He didn’t mention about it being a rape child. Said he’d come across me all distressed, because I’d just heard that you’d been killed – told her he’d held me and soothed me and well – it had happened between us, just the once. An act of comfort.’
She drew a deep, shuddering breath, covering her face with her hands as if she were afraid to look at him; see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.
‘Tom, love – don’t you think it was better for the poor, dear woman to think her grandchild had been conceived that way? And it explained away the fact that he was born eight months after we were married. When a boy was born, that night Giles died, it helped her, a little, to accept it.
‘I had the child named Andrew Robert Giles for all the Rowangarth men the war had taken. Julia was pleased about it because he’s Sir Andrew, now – he’s got her husband’s name. Little Drew – there, I’ve said it again. It’s as if telling you has driven all the hurt out of me and I can really think of him as Giles’s son. Do you forgive me, Tom?’
‘For what?’ Still he sat there, making no move to take her in his arms, kiss her, tell her he understood. ‘It wasn’t your fault some drunken soldier got you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’
‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’
‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’
‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’
‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’
‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.
‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.
‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’
‘My son, Tom!’
‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’
