скачать книгу бесплатно
‘We’ve come to stay at a house that belongs to the Earl of Sterling. Do you know the place? Is it far from here?’ She was beginning to sound like Wyn.
‘Please?’ the carter asked in a tone as if begging her pardon for not having understood. ‘There’s no earl that lives on Tresco, ma’am.’
‘The earl doesn’t live here.’ Caroline shushed Wyn who was dancing about, pestering her with more questions. ‘I’m certain he has not been here in the past seven years at least. But he told me he owns a house on this island.’
The young man shook his head slowly. ‘Only local folk lives here, ma’am. Unless… you mean the old Maitland place?’
Caroline’s sinking spirits rebounded. ‘That’s it, to be sure! Bennett Maitland is the Earl of Sterling. I am his wife.’
How much longer would she be able to make that lofty claim?
‘How far is the house?’ she asked. ‘Can you take us there?’
‘Not but a step, ma’am. Over yonder.’ He pointed into the darkness.
Caroline strained for a glimpse of lights shining from the windows, but could make out none. ‘Is there a carriage I might hire to take us there?’
‘Sorry, my lady, there’s only my cart and Steren, here.’ The young islander patted his pony on the rump. ‘You and the lad are welcome to ride if you can find a perch among your baggage.’
Wyn ran over to the cart and the young man hoisted him in. Caroline was about to climb after her son when a cough drew her attention back to Albert. Even if it was ‘not but a step’, the footman would never be able to hobble that far on his injured ankle. One look at the brimming cart told her it had room for only one more person.
‘Get in.’ She beckoned the footman. ‘I don’t want to be out on a night like this any longer than we have to.’
They were soon on their way. Caroline had never thought the day would come when she would walk so a servant could ride. At least the exertion of trudging behind the cart made her somewhat warmer, while the gusts of salty air helped settle her queasy stomach.
But even they could not blow away the sense of guilt that nagged at her for dragging Wyn off on such a miserable journey. If she’d had more time to anticipate the consequences of her actions, perhaps she might have left him to his familiar nursery routine and the competent care of Mrs McGregor. But the dread of never seeing her child again, and her desire to be a more attentive mother during the time they had left, had overridden every other consideration.
‘Are you all right, Wyn?’ she called to him.
‘Y-yes, Mama.’ He sounded cheerful enough under the circumstances. ‘I’ve never been allowed outdoors after dark before and I’ve never ridden in a cart. It’s like an adventure!’
Parker muttered something under her breath that Caroline did not catch.
‘Here we are,’ announced the islander as his cart came to a halt. ‘This is the Maitland house.’
‘There must be some mistake.’ Caroline surveyed the rustic stone dwelling by the wildly flickering light of their guide’s torch. The place was no bigger than the groundskeeper’s lodge at Sterling House. All the windows were shuttered and not even the faintest gleam of light escaped through the slats. ‘It looks quite abandoned. Are there no caretakers living here?’
‘Not for ten years, ma’am.’ The helpful reply demolished all of Caroline’s hopes. ‘Mag and Jack Harris used to keep the place for the lady who owned it. But after Jack passed on, Aunt Mag went to live with her daughter on Bryher. The house has been shut up ever since.’
‘Does anyone have a key?’ Caroline’s voice grew shrill with desperation. ‘So we can at least take shelter from this wind.’
‘No need for locks and keys on Tresco, ma’am.’ The carter assured her. ‘Off-islanders think we’re all smugglers, but we’re honest folk and there’s few enough of us that we’d soon know if anybody was making away with what didn’t belong to him.’
To demonstrate, he lifted the latch and pushed the door open. The hinges gave a painful-sounding squeal.
Wyn scrambled down from the cart and followed his mother into the house behind the carter, who lit the way with his torch. As her anxious gaze swept around the parlour, Caroline’s heartening visions of warm fires, chocolate and a hot bath crumbled into cold dust like the kind that covered every surface in the room. Cobwebs draped the ceiling corners. Dead insects littered the floor.
‘What is that smell?’ Parker fanned her nose. ‘Did someone set fire to a load of rotten fish?’
‘Oh, no, miss.’ The carter inhaled. ‘That’d be smoke from the summer kelp fires. I reckon it seeped in over the years and never got aired out properly.’
Just then, Caroline would have given anything to be back at Sterling House—even in the servants’ hall, which would be warm and clean. If Wyn had not been with her, she might have sunk to the floor and wept in despair. As it was, it took every scrap of pluck she could muster to shore up her faltering composure.
‘We cannot stay here tonight.’ She shook her head. ‘Everything will need to be cleaned and aired before we take up residence.’
‘Not by me.’ Parker crossed her arms in front of her flat chest. ‘I’m a lady’s maid, not a charwoman. I’d sooner swim back to Penzance than scrub all this.’
Caroline was too tired and cold to argue the matter just then. She cast the carter a pleading look. ‘Is there anywhere we can find lodging for the night? Did you say Tresco has an inn?’
‘Aye, ma’am. T’other side of the island.’
Parker and Albert groaned.
‘We can be there in half an hour,’ added the carter, ‘if we step lively.’
Though Caroline welcomed the news that the inn was not far away, it disheartened her to realise how tiny this island must be if it took such a short time to cross from one coast to the other. Tresco would be her remote, rustic prison—as different as it could possibly be from the luxurious, stimulating life she’d enjoyed in London.
How long would she be obliged to stay here? she asked herself as her small party trudged through the dark windy night to the inn. Just until the tattle about her and Fitz Astley died down? Or would she be stranded here for the rest of her life once Bennett divorced her?
Somehow she managed to keep going for another two hours, hiring them rooms for the night, ordering a modest supper and finally putting Wyn to bed. Once he had dropped off to sleep, she slipped out of the room. In the narrow hallway she encountered the innkeeper’s wife, a small, neat woman with a ruddy complexion and dark-brown hair, grizzled at the temples.
‘Are you ailing, my lady?’ the woman asked in a kindly tone. ‘Tell me your trouble and perhaps I can brew you a remedy.’
‘I’m not ill, Mrs Pender, only tired.’ Caroline contrived a poor substitute for a smile. ‘It has been a long journey from London and I have not slept well.’
‘I see,’ replied Mrs Pender. ‘Well, if it’s nothing worse than that, I reckon a cup of camomile tea would do you a power of good. Would you care to join me in my parlour?’
Caroline hesitated for an instant. What would her friends in London say if they knew she was keeping company with a rural innkeeper’s wife? Some of them might think worse of her for that than for being caught kissing Mr Astley at Almack’s.
But she was a vast distance from London now. And none of those friends were here to comfort or divert her. Indeed, she doubted any of them would have come to visit her if she’d still been back in London. They seemed to view scandal as some sort of contagious malady that might infect them if they ventured too near.
This woman was the first to have shown her any kindness since that awful night her world had come crashing down. Until this moment, she had not realised how starved she was for a bit of agreeable company.
‘That is most obliging of you.’ Despite her fatigue and all her worries, Caroline found herself able to smile more sincerely. ‘I would enjoy a little refreshment and someone to share it. I don’t believe I’ve ever had camomile tea.’
‘It’s fine stuff, my lady.’ Mrs Pender started down the stairs and Caroline followed her. ‘It has a mild flavour and calms the mind to help you sleep. I pick the flowers early in the summer from the meadows around Great Pool.’
There were meadows of wildflowers on this island? Caroline found it hard to believe after what she’d seen of Tresco’s rugged, inhospitable landscape so far.
‘It’s an honour to have you and your son staying here, my lady.’ The landlady beckoned Caroline into a snug little parlour, then called a servant to fetch hot water from the kitchen. ‘It does my heart good to think of family living in the Maitland house again after all these years. I mind your husband used to come here with his mother when he was about the age of your little fellow.’
‘Did he?’ Caroline sank on to an armchair by the hearth, gratefully soaking up the warmth of the fire. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Yes, indeed, ma’am.’ Her hostess beamed. ‘My auntie cooked for them and I used to help her out. The countess was such a kind lady and Master Bennett… I mean… his lordship was the picture of your son.’
‘Was he?’ Because Bennett never spoke of his mother, Caroline had always assumed she must have died when he was very young, as hers had. If he’d been old enough to remember, why had he never mentioned her? ‘Was my husband close to his mother in those days?’
‘Quite devoted, ma’am. And he was all the world to her. She was for ever taking him for walks and picnics. When the weather was bad, she’d play cards with him and read to him by the hour.’
Those were all things Caroline wanted to do with Wyn. But first she would have to get that deserted house cleaned so it would be fit to live in.
‘What sort of woman was my husband’s mother? I never had the pleasure of knowing her.’ Would Mrs Pender think it strange that Bennett had not told her about his mother?
‘Well…’ The landlady thought back. ‘I recall she was always polite to folks, no matter what their station.’
Caroline wondered if that was how Bennett had come by his political principles—his admirable concern for the enslaved and the working poor.
‘She was pretty as a picture,’ Mrs Pender continued, ‘though never very strong, poor soul. She always came here for the climate in the autumn while her husband was hunting.’
The maid returned then with a teapot, cups and a steaming kettle. Caroline watched as Mrs Pender brewed up their tea.
While it steeped, she continued to pump the landlady for information to appease her curiosity. ‘I suppose it has been quite a long while since they last came to the island?’
‘Laws, yes, my lady. It must be every day of two dozen years.’
‘That must have been when his mother died,’ Caroline murmured to herself.
In the process of lifting the teapot, Mrs Pender froze. ‘No, my lady. She came back once, a few years later, without him. Not to stay, but just for a few days to pack up some things from the house to take away.’
The woman looked as if she meant to say something else, then suddenly changed her mind. Instead she fussed with the tea, pouring it through a tiny strainer.
‘Is there something else?’ Caroline fixed the woman with a searching gaze as she took the offered cup. ‘Whatever it is, I should very much like to know.’
The landlady wavered. ‘I don’t like to gossip, ma’am. Especially not about her ladyship. She was always good to me.’
The woman’s evasive answer only intrigued Caroline more. What manner of gossip could she know about Bennett’s mother?
Taking a sip from her cup, she savoured the wholesome, mellow sweetness. The fragrance alone seemed to soothe her. ‘I appreciate your discretion, Mrs Pender, in not talking over the private matters of my family with strangers. However, since I am a member of the family, perhaps you could make an exception?’
The landlady sipped her tea in silence, clearly mulling over Caroline’s request. ‘Perhaps it’s no great matter, after all, ma’am. It’s just that when her ladyship came back that last time, she brought a gentleman with her. Fine looking, he was, and very agreeable. I can’t recall his name, now, but he… wasn’t her husband.’
Those last few words, Mrs Pender spoke in a scandalised whisper.
Caroline nearly choked on a mouthful of her tea. Had Bennett’s parents been divorced? He had never said so, but then again he’d never spoken of them at all. Could this be the reason—because he was ashamed of the family scandal?
‘Perhaps the man was some relative of her ladyship?’ she suggested. ‘A brother or a cousin?’
‘Aye, ma’am. He might have been.’ Mrs Pender sounded doubtful.
If Bennett was ashamed of his parents’ divorce, Caroline mused, why was he so eager to taint their young son with that same kind of shame?
Chapter Three
By taking flight with their son, his wife had banished Bennett’s few doubts about seeking a divorce. He’d pursued Caroline’s party relentlessly all the way from London, and might have caught up with them at Penzance if a lame horse had not delayed him. By the time he landed on Tresco, late the next afternoon, he feared he would find no sign of Caroline or his son because Astley had spirited them abroad.
Striding up from the quay at Old Grimsby through a spit of rain, Bennett was struck by an uncanny feeling that he’d journeyed back in time. Nothing about the island appeared to have changed in the past twenty years, from the stone cottages with their thatched roofs to the wheeled barrels for fetching water from Great Pool. As he approached the house, he half-expected to meet his younger self running out the front door.
Perhaps that was what stopped him from calling out, compelling him instead to lift the latch with care and ease the door open almost reluctantly. He found the parlour deserted, the furniture still draped in voluminous dust sheets. The room seemed so much smaller than he remembered it. The floor was covered with a layer of dust, soot and dead flies. Was no one tending to the place any more? Or had they stopped bothering after so many years? Perhaps they’d expected some message to warn them of an impending visit before they went to the trouble of cleaning. The only sign anyone had been there recently was a scattering of fresh footprints on the dirty floor.
Had Caroline come here, as he’d bidden her, only to flee from the place in disgust? He wasn’t certain he could blame her if she had.
Unpleasant smells issued from the direction of kitchen, but the faint sound of movement overhead drew Bennett to the stairs, which he mounted quietly. Following the sound, he peered into the bedchamber that his mother had occupied on their long-ago holidays here. The sight that met his eyes quite confounded him.
There was Caroline, down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor with violent energy. Though she was turned away from him, he recognised her golden curls and her gown. It was one of the simplest she owned, yet it still looked far more elaborate than any housemaid would wear to undertake such a task.
His elegant countess stooping to common housework? If he had not seen it with his own eyes, Bennett never would have believed it possible.
As he watched Caroline dip her brush into a bucket of steaming water, then drag it back and forth across the floorboards, his gaze was irresistibly drawn to her shapely bottom. Raised towards him and covered only with flimsy layers of linen and muslin, it swayed with a most enticing rhythm as she worked. He could picture it bare, those smooth, firm lobes fairly begging for the attention of his hands. His body responded to the imagined invitation with straining hunger. He ached to toss his wife upon the cold, musty-smelling bed and purge all the conflicting feelings she provoked in him.
Against his will, a growl of sultry yearning rumbled deep in his chest.
The sound made Caroline glance back over her shoulder. Catching sight of him, she shrieked as if she’d seen a ghost. Trying to rise while keeping as far away from him as possible, she scuttled like a crab, knocking over the scrub bucket. When she sprang up to avoid the gush of water, she struck her head on the steeply sloped gable ceiling.
‘Look what you made me do!’ She rubbed her head as a stream of soapy water poured over the floor. ‘Why did you sneak up on me like that?’
Her furious glare and accusing tone quenched his sympathy for her difficulties.
Bennett’s temper flared, fuelled by the volatile desire she’d ignited in him. ‘What did you mean by sneaking away from London with my son? I never gave you leave to take him!’
‘You never forbade me either!’ She stooped to tip the bucket upright, too late to do any good. ‘This was the only way I could get a final chance to spend time with my child.’
‘I would have forbidden it,’ he snapped, ‘if you’d had the civility to inform me of your intentions. Instead I was left to discover you’d made away with him without my knowledge or consent. For all I knew, you’d run off abroad with him and your… paramour.’
Her blue-green eyes blazed with the fury of a storm on the Mediterranean. ‘If you mean Mr Astley, he is not my paramour. Even if he were, how could you think I would ever steal Wyn away? It is you who are determined to deprive our son of a parent, with your threat of divorce.’
If she had snatched up her scrub brush and hurled it at his head, it could not have hit Bennett as hard as that accusation she seemed to pluck from the depths of his conscience. Never in seven years of marriage had they quarreled with such open animosity. Their preferred weapons had been frosty silences broken by the occasional waspish barb. Much as this raw hostility horrified his deep-rooted sense of self-control, another part of him relished the opportunity to vent some of the resentment that had long smouldered inside him.
‘How could I think you capable of absconding with my son?’ He hurled Caroline’s question back at her, heavy with sarcasm. ‘Perhaps because you have recently demonstrated the depths of impropriety to which you are capable of sinking. With Astley of all men—the choice does not speak well for your discernment.’
‘Why do you refuse to believe there was nothing worse going on between me and Mr Astley than what you saw with your own eyes at Almack’s?’ she demanded. ‘Is it because you don’t want to? Perhaps you have been waiting for a chance like this all along—a pretext to be rid of me now that I have served my purpose by bearing you an heir.’
Did she truly believe he was seeking an excuse to divorce her? Or was she only trying to deflect attention from her infamous conduct by casting aspersions on his motives? Beneath the passionate hostility that crackled between them, Bennett sensed the other kind of passion. In a plain gown, with her hair tousled by her exertions and a dewy glow in her cheeks, Caroline looked less like the pampered diamond of society and more like an earthy, sensual woman who appealed to him in far too many ways. Did she suspect what power she might hold over him if he let down his guard?
He must take care she did not.
Refusing to dignify her preposterous accusation with an answer, he changed the subject instead. ‘Speaking of my heir, where is Wyn? And what were you doing down on your knees, scrubbing the floor? I didn’t think you knew how.’
‘It is not Greek or higher mathematics. I’ve watched servants scrub floors all my life.’ Caroline pushed a fallen lock of hair off her forehead. ‘Wyn is with Albert, back at the inn. I was trying to get this room fit for us to sleep in tonight. It hasn’t been easy, considering the place has not been cleaned in years. Now it’s a worse mess than ever.’
Gazing down at the drenched floor, she shook her head and heaved a weary sigh. She looked so thoroughly discouraged Bennett could not suppress a secret pang of shame. ‘I had no idea you would find the house in such a state. I thought there was still someone taking care of it.’
Caroline cast him a look that made it clear she did not believe his excuse any more than he believed she’d been a faithful wife. Did she think he had sent her to such a dirty, deserted old place on purpose? Not that it would harm her to do a bit of honest work and learn how ordinary folk lived. Still, after seven years of marriage, she should know he took his responsibility to provide for her seriously—even when she neglected her duty to be faithful.
‘But why were you scrubbing the floor,’ he persisted, ‘while Albert plays nursemaid?’
‘Because Albert is in no fit condition to do anything else at the moment.’ Caroline told him how the footman had injured his ankle. ‘Parker flatly refused to scrub floors and I didn’t dare press her for fear she might leave on the next boat. She agreed to do the marketing and cooking, both of which take more skill than this.’
By the smells rising from the kitchen, Bennett had grave doubts about Parker’s culinary abilities. ‘Why did you not stay a few more days at the inn and engage some local women to set this place to rights?’
