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‘Give.’
‘Give?’ Her face had flushed, a mottled mix of red and white marking her neck. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? Your family has owned this land for generations. Ayrebourne cares nothing for the people or the animals or the land.’
‘Then we have much in common,’ Ren said.
‘But you are not cruel.’
He shrugged. ‘People change.’
She shook her head, the movement so violent that her black bonnet slid to one side, giving her a peculiar appearance and making him want to straighten it. The odd impulse cut through his anger. His eyes stung. He wished—
‘Not like this,’ she said. ‘Something has happened. Something has changed you.’
‘My bro—’ He stopped himself. ‘Edmund died, if you recall. That is not enough?’
‘No. Something else. It happened long before Edmund left.’
For a moment, he was tempted to tell her everything. To tell her that Lord Graham was not his father, that Rendell Graham did not exist, had never existed. Why not? So many suspected anyway.
Then he straightened, moving from her.
She had always seen the best in him. She had run her fingers over his artwork and found beauty. She had touched his scrawny boyish arms and discerned muscle. He could not tell her. Not now. Not today. Not yet.
‘We should go to the carriage,’ he said.
‘And that’s it? You throw out this...this...ludicrous, awful proposal and then suggest we go home for tea.’
‘I will be having something considerably stronger, but you may stick to tea if you prefer.’
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Yes?’ He raised a brow.
‘The drawl. It makes you sound not yourself.’
He smiled. ‘Perhaps because I am not myself,’ he said.
Chapter Four (#u5f252952-154a-55bd-a0d3-0e561d1f748d)
Beth told Jamie after dinner that Ren intended to dispose of the estate. She had delayed, fearing it would distress him. Besides, she needed the time to mull over the news, to ensure that she was capable of speaking the words without smashing plates or throwing cutlery.
She heard Jamie’s angry movement. He stood and the dining room chair clattered, crashing into the wall behind him. ‘What? Why? Why sell?’
‘He is not selling. He intends to give it away.’
‘Give it away?’ Jamie paced. ‘Even more ludicrous. You have to stop him.’
‘Me?’
‘You are his wife.’
‘Not really. And he certainly will not listen to me.’
‘Who will he give it to?’ Jamie asked.
‘The Duke.’
‘The Duke?’ Jamie’s movements stopped, his stunned disbelief echoed her own. ‘Why? Good Lord, Ayrebourne turns his fields into park land so his rich friends can hunt. Starves his tenants. Why? Why the Duke?’
‘I don’t know,’ Beth said. ‘I mean, Ren knows that his cousin is loathsome. That is why he married me. It makes no sense that he would choose that man out of all humanity!’
‘His cousin...’ Jamie spoke softly. She heard him return to his chair and sit. His fingers drummed on the table.
‘You’ve thought of something? It matters that the Duke is his cousin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I—’ She heard Jamie’s movement from the creaking of the chair. ‘Can’t.’
Jamie had never been able to speak when distressed. Words were never easy for him, particularly if the topic digressed from agricultural matters.
‘But you know something that makes this understandable, or at least more so?’
He grunted.
‘And you can’t tell me?’
‘No.’ Jamie pushed his chair back. It banged against the wall. She heard him rise. She heard the quick, rapid movement of his footsteps across the room. ‘Don’t know anything anyway. Rumour. Best ask your husband.’
With this curt statement, he left. The door swung shut, muting the rapid clatter of his brisk footsteps as he proceeded down the passageway.
‘Bother.’ Beth spoke to the empty room. Jamie would drive a saint to distraction, she was sure of it. His knowledge was usually limited to seedlings and now, when he actually knew something useful, he refused to speak of it.
She half-rose, intent on pressing him further, but that would accomplish nothing. He was right, she supposed. She should talk to Ren. He was her husband, at least in name, and she deserved some form of explanation. Besides, she thought, with a characteristic surge of optimism, the fact that a logical reason existed, however warped the logic, was hopeful. One could argue against a plan rooted in reason and while she lacked any number of skills, fluency in words or argument was not one of them.
Beth stood with sudden purpose. She was not of the personality to give up. She would talk to Ren. She would make him tell her why he was so driven to give away his birthright. She would remind him that, whatever he felt now, he had once loved this land and its people—
That was it!
For a second, she felt transported. The plan flashed across her mind, fully formed and brilliant. She could almost feel those heady, optimistic days of childhood: the sun’s warmth, the splash of water, the smell of moss and dirt mixed with a tang of turpentine and paint.
Grasping her cane, she hurried, counting her steps between her chair and the door and then took the twenty paces along the passageway to the stairs. Of course, she hadn’t been to the nursery in eons, but everything was familiar: the smooth wood of the banister rail, the creak of the third stair under her foot and the whine of the door handle. Everything was reminiscent of childhood. Layered under the dusty scent of a closed room, she even detected a hint of cinnamon left over from long-ago nursery teas.
Beth crossed the hardwood flooring until her cane struck the cupboard. She knelt, swinging open the door and reaching inwards. Papers rustled under her fingertips. She could feel the cool dustiness of chalk, the hardness of the slate boards and the smooth leather covers of books, soft from use.
Then her fingers found the artist’s palette with its hard ovals of dried paint and, beside it, the spiky bristles of brushes. She stretched her fingers from them and, to her delight, felt the dry, smooth texture of rolled canvas. She grinned, pulling eagerly so that the canvasses tumbled on to the floor with a rustling thud.
Squatting lower, she unrolled them, bending close as though proximity might help her see. Carefully, she ran her fingers across each one, focusing as Ren had taught her to do. She felt the dusty residue of chalk, the ridged texture of oils and the smooth flatness of water paints.
She saw, as her fingers roamed the images. Memories flooded her. She felt close to him here, yet also distant. This was the person she had known. This was the person who had captured beauty and who had joked and laughed as they walked for miles, dragging with them the clattering easel.
The bottom canvas fascinated her most. It was a landscape. She could feel the tiny delicate strokes which formed the tufts of grass mixed with the strong, bold lines of fence posts and trees.
Likely she’d been with him when he’d painted this, lying with the sun hot on her face and the grass cool against her back. Ren had said that the grass was green and she’d decided that green must smell of mint and that it would feel damp like spring mist. In autumn she’d touch the dry stubble in the hay field and he’d say it was yellow and she would decide that yellow was like the sun’s heat.
In those days, he had loved every inch of this land.
And then everything had changed.
* * *
The next morning, Ren glared at the neat columns of figures written on the ledger in front of him. The estate was in excellent shape. The tenants seemed content and the crops prosperous. Sad to give it to a man such as the Duke.
He shifted back in his seat, glancing at the paintings on the study wall left over from his grandfather’s time: a hunting scene and a poorly executed depiction of a black stallion in profile.
He felt more an imposter here than anywhere else on the sprawling estate. In fact, he had been in the study only twice since the return of the cheap portrait painter—the before and after of his life. He’d been summoned that day. Lord Graham had been sitting behind his desk, his face set in harsh lines and his skin so grey it was as though he had aged a lifetime within twenty-four hours. He’d stood immediately upon Ren’s entry, picking up the birch switch.
And then his usually kindly father had whipped him. And he hadn’t even known why.
He had been summoned one other time, after completing school. There had been no violence. Instead, Lord Graham had sat behind this desk, his eyes shuttered and without emotion. He’d spoken in measured tones, stating only that an allowance would be paid, provided Ren stayed away from Graham Hill and kept his silence. Ren had taken the stipend for three months before profitable investments had allowed him to return it and refuse any further payment.
Now, in an ironic twist of fate, Graham Hill could be his. Ren looked instinctively to the window and the park outside. The branches were still largely bare, but touched with miniscule green leaves, unfurling in the pale sunshine. Patches of moss dotted the lawn, bright and verdant beside grass still yellowed from winter.
It hurt to give it up, just as it had hurt to leave it.
A movement caught his attention and he saw a female figure approach. She held a cane in one hand and a basket in the other. His wife. She was counting her steps. He could see it in the tap and swing of her cane and the slight movement of her lips. She moved with care, but also with that ease which he had so often admired. Good Lord, if he were deprived of sight he would be paralysed, unable to move for fear of falling into an abyss.
He watched as she progressed briskly, disappearing about the side of the house. He supposed she had returned to berate him. Or else she wanted to again demand an annulment.
Anger tightened his gut. He’d kept his word. She’d had freedom, autonomy and yet she’d thrown it back at him—
‘My lord, Miss...um, your...her ladyship is in the parlour,’ Dobson announced.
He stood at the study door, his elderly face solemn and lugubrious.
Poor Dobson—he’d found the marriage difficult enough. Not that Dobson disliked Beth, he simply disliked the unconventional.
Beth entered immediately. Naturally, she had not remained in the parlour, as instructed. She never had been good with directions. He watched her approach and knew both a confused desire as well as a reluctance to see her. Even after years spent amidst London’s most glamorous women, he found her beauty arresting. She was not stunning, exactly. Her clothes were elegant, but in no way ostentatious or even fashionable. Yet there was something about her—she had a delicacy of feature, a luminosity which made her oddly not of this world, as though she were a fairy creature from a magic realm—
‘Ren!’ Beth interrupted his thoughts in that blunt way of hers. She approached, counting her steps to his desk, and now stood before him. With a thud, she put down the large wicker basket. ‘You must see these!’
He dismissed Dobson and watched as Beth opened the carrier.
Then his breath caught. A stabbing pain shot just below his ribcage. His hands tightened into balled fists as she pulled out the rolled canvasses, laying them flat on the mahogany desktop.
‘Where did you find those?’ He forcibly pushed out the words, his throat so tight he feared he’d choke.
He stared at the images: the barn, its grey planks splitting with age, his old horse, the mosaic of autumnal colours, orange leaves and grass yellowed into straw from summer heat.
They were childishly executed, but with such care...such love.
For a moment, he felt that eager enthusiasm to paint. It was a tingling within his fingers, a salivation, a need, an all-consuming drive to create and capture beauty, if only for a moment.
‘Why did you bring these here?’ he asked in a staccato rhythm.
He felt his face twist into bitter lines—not that Beth could see them. It should have made him feel less vulnerable, that she could not discern his expression, but oddly it did not. He’d always felt as though Beth saw more, as though she was better able to discern human frailty, despite her lack of sight.
‘To remind you.’
‘I do not need reminding.’
He ran his fingers across the dry dustiness of the paint. It had been late August. The weather had been hot, a perfect weekend of cloudless skies and air still redolent with summer scent as though fate had conspired to give him that one, final, beautiful weekend.
‘I wanted you to remember how you felt,’ Beth said.
Of course he remembered! How could he forget? He’d felt as though, within a single instant, everything he had known, everything he had loved, everything he had believed had been erased, disappearing within a yawning hole, a cess pit.
The pain, the darkness—worse—the hopelessness had grown, twisting through him, debilitating even now. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight as a child might to block out nightmares. He pushed the canvasses away. They fell to the floor, taking with them the brass paperweight and a candle stick, the crash huge.
‘Ren?’
‘Take them!’
‘But why? You loved to paint. You loved this land.’
‘You need to go.’ He forced himself to keep his voice low and his hands tight to his sides because he wanted to punch the wall and hurl objects against windows in a mad chaos of destruction.
‘Nonsense! I’m not going anywhere until I understand the reason behind your decision. There is a reason. Jamie said so.’
‘Jamie? Jamie?’ Did even Jamie know his secret—a man who seldom spoke except about seedlings? ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He went silent. But I need to know, to understand. I thought these would remind you. I thought you might enjoy them.’
‘You were wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘I—’ Words usually came so glibly, fluidly. Now they stuck in his throat. ‘You need to go,’ he repeated.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am angry and I do not want to frighten you.’
The woman laughed—not harsh laughter, but gentle. ‘Ren, you could never frighten me. You could not frighten me in a million years.’
Of course not! He might frighten grown men in duels. He might race his horse so fast that his groom paled or punch so hard his knuckles bled, but this tiny woman laughed in the face of his rage.
