To Have and to Hold (24 page)

"A name," she said consideringly, following the dog's antic explorations with her shining eyes. She leaned her shoulder against his. "Since he's a yellow dog, we could call him Amber. Is that too feminine?"

"Definitely."

"Mmm. What about Apricot?"

Sebastian snorted and made a face.

"I know -Buttercup."

Now she was teasing
him,
and the novelty was enchanting. "If you name this dog Buttercup, I swear I'll take him back from whence he came."

The puppy found its way back to them and began to play a game of tug with the handkerchief Rachel whipped out of her pocket. "I've got it.
Dandelion.
No, listen," she insisted when he started to quibble, "he could be 'Dandelion,' but we'd call him 'Dandy.' That's all right, isn't it? Dandy!" The pup's ears went up at that, no question about it, and Rachel sent Sebastian a look of triumph.

He was besotted. "He's your dog; name him Powder Puff for all I care. You can keep him here if you like, although you'd have to housetrain him. Or he could sleep in the stables with Collie and the lads. No telling how big he's going to get. Shall we take him for a walk?"

"Now?"

"Why not?"

She took some persuading; she still had work to do, she said, and a meeting with Judelet later to discuss the kitchen staff's shortcomings. Sebastian overruled her halfhearted objections, and a few minutes later they were strolling through the gatehouse arch, with Dandy at their heels.

They stopped on the bridge to watch the sun sparkle on the chattering river and to look at the house. "Do you think Lynton Hall is ugly?" Sebastian asked conversationally. He could hardly remember his own first impression of it anymore; it was simply Lynton to him now, the house where he lived.

"Oh, no, I think it's very handsome. It has a few flaws, but I think it carries them with great dignity. And it doesn't take itself too seriously, does it?"

He smiled, thinking of the ridicule Sully and the others had heaped on it. Rachel was right and they were wrong, because she was a better person. She saw more clearly, not only with her shrewd eyes but with her tolerant heart.

"I thought I'd have that chimney fixed," he mentioned, pointing. "And new slates put on the eaves where the rain's been washing in. Holyoake says it's been washing in for about a hundred years."

She looked at him quizzically. She was probably thinking it was odd that he was the one breaking a hundred-year-old tradition of neglect. He couldn't account for it himself. "What's your house like in Rye?" she asked as they started to walk again.

"It's called Steyne Court. It's huge, colossal, a great beast of a house. I've always hated it."

"Why?"

"Don't know. It swallowed me up when I was a child. It has all the warmth of a memorial to the war dead."

"But you'll go to live there, won't you, once you inherit your father's title?"

"Yes, I suppose, for a primary residence. Most of the time I expect to be in London. What else? It's what one does." Frowning, he picked up a stick and flung it into the path ahead of them for the dog to chase. They went along for a while without speaking. "Do you ride?"

She smiled and shook her head.

"I'll teach you. I know the horse who would suit, a mare called Molly, gentle as a lamb. Are you game?" The prospect intrigued him.

"I don't think so."

"Are you afraid of horses?"

"No, it's not that."

"What, then? I promise you'd enjoy yourself."

She shook her head again, smiling, keeping her eyes down.

He let it pass. For the first time it dawned on him that she might not want their affair carried on in public. Of course; that must be it. He felt like slapping his forehead. For a man who prided himself on his understanding of women, he'd been remarkably slow where this one was concerned. But he would do better. When all his faculties were engaged, there was no sharper student of the feminine mind than Sebastian Verlaine. He really believed it.

They'd come to the far reaches of an abandoned canal, a tributary of the Plym, used ten or twenty years ago for transporting goods up from Devonport and Plymouth to the moorland towns. "Is this your land?" Rachel asked, and he nodded. "And your cows?" She pointed to a lazy huddle of fawn-colored Jerseys, idling under a tree in the near field. While they watched, the cows began to lumber toward them, curious, phlegmatically craving a diversion. The low stone wall forty feet away kept them at a respectful distance. Dandy, who had been snuffling in the weedchoked canal water, jumped a foot in the air when he saw them. After one brave yip, clearly counterfeit, he made a dash for Rachel and dived behind her skirts.

"I knew we should've named him Buttercup," she joked, petting the excited dog to calm him.

"Ingrate. He's known me longer—ten minutes at least—but he comes to
you
for protection."

"If you wore skirts," she said consolingly, "I'm sure he would come to you. And don't forget, you put him in a box and I let him out of it. He's a very smart dog; he knows who his friends are."

They sat down on a fallen beech tree not far from the river and contemplated the stagnant water, the piercing blue of the sky, the wildflowers blooming along the riverbank. "I used to dream of flowers," Rachel told him presently. "Sometimes I could close my eyes and pretend that my cell was a greenhouse." She smiled wryly. "Quite an imaginative feat, but I had a lot of time to practice. I'd picture myself watering and pruning with the hot sun streaming through the glass. Pulling up weeds. Digging with my hands in the clean soil."

He took one of her hands from her lap and kissed it. She smiled and shook her head slightly, telling him not to feel sorry for her. But pity wasn't the emotion he felt. "That's over. All that bleakness—it's finished."

She bowed her head. "Yes, of course. I know that."

"No, I don't think you do. But you will." He smiled, to lessen the solemnity; that had almost sounded like a threat, and he'd meant it as a vow. "They sent you to an early grave, Rachel, but I'm going to dig you out of it and resurrect you. Revive you."

She looked at him strangely. "I'm not sure anyone can do that."

"lean."

She lowered her eyes, hiding her skepticism. "I'm not unhappy now."

He noted the double negative, but he didn't worry about it. He had two immediate goals: to make her laugh and to make her come. He thought of telling her, but decided it would make her too self-conscious. Might even inhibit her, slow down the inevitable. But that both goals would eventually be realized, he hadn't the slightest doubt.

The summer sun dipped behind the oak trees at their back; a fresh breeze had sprung up from the south, bearing the faint, barely noticeable odor of the sea. Rachel stood up and began to pick the moon daisies that grew in patches alongside the canal. He watched her for a while, admiring her slow, effortless grace. Dandy brought him a stick. He threw it over and over, at lengthening distances, until the puppy began to flag and finally collapsed, with only enough strength left to chew the stick.

Rachel wandered back, resuming her place beside him on the log. She was easy with silence, easier than he was; certainly she was more used to it. He could make her smile now, but her eyes were always sad. He put his arm around her, and she relaxed against him, taking back one of the flowers from the bouquet she'd given him and holding it to her nose.

"How did it begin?" he heard himself ask. "Why did you marry your husband? Tell me about the girl in the photograph."

"Oh," she murmured. "That girl." She took two more flowers from him and began to plait the long stems together. "I look at her sometimes and wonder who she was, what became of her. As if she were an old acquaintance I can barely remember."

"Tell me about your life before you went to prison."

"What would you like to know?"

Everything,
he thought. "Were you happy when you were a child?"

"Yes," she answered, but not very forcefully. "But I was very shy. And spoiled, I'm sure. My mother always told me I was beautiful, that I was destined for great things. Great things," she repeated, her voice full of melancholy. "She had such high hopes for me. I never felt I was doing enough to live up to her expectations."

"What about your father?"

"My father didn't expect anything of me. We weren't very close."

"And now they're both dead?"

"They died when I was in gaol, within months of each other."

"It must have been painful," he said, conscious of the inadequacy of the word. "And your brother?"

"Tom. He lives in Canada now with his own family. We don't correspond anymore."

"Why not?"

She lifted a hand and let it drop. "We did for a while; but letters in prison are so thoroughly censored, it's almost better not to have any."

"You could write to him now."

"Yes. But he has a new life. He went to Canada to get away from what happened. I don't think he would welcome being reminded of it now."

He thought of her grief when she'd told him her family believed she was guilty of murdering Wade. Of all the heartaches and indignities, that must have been the hardest one to bear. He imagined her as a child, shy, obedient, anxious to please a mother with "high hopes" and a father who ignored her. "How did you meet Wade?" He had to know it all now, but he was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of opening this sorrowful subject.

"Lydia and I—My parents sent me—My father was—" She stopped, blowing a frustrated puff of air. ' 'I keep having to start further back."

"Start anywhere. Tell it any way you like."

"I want you to understand, though. I want ... I need to justify myself."

"Not to me."

Her hands went still and she looked at him for a moment, her eyes arrested, face alert. "To myself, then. In some ways, I ruined my own life. I try to forget it, but the truth always comes back."

He couldn't believe it; some too-fine sensibility was at work here, he was certain. If anything good could come from making her tell the story, maybe it would be that she could see she was blameless.

"My father was a schoolmaster," she began again. "He had his own boys' school in Exeter until his health began to fail. Then he moved the family to Ottery St. Mary and did private tutoring, preparing students for university. I was about twelve at the time. It was a comedown in the world, but I wouldn't have minded it, none of us would, I don't think, if my mother hadn't taken on so about it. She missed the city, despised village life, hated what we'd 'come to,' as she always put it. My brother's future was secure by then—he was reading law with a judge in Torbay. He would be solid and steady, we all knew, even if his career would never be spectacular."

"And your mother," Sebastian guessed, his mind skipping ahead, "wanted one of you to be
spectacular."

"Yes."

"And that left you. And you were beautiful." Already he could see where the story was heading.

"I
wasn't,"
she denied, smiling—and he could tell she believed it. "But I was all right, not ugly. Tall for my age. I had pretty ..." She touched the side of her head, then gave an impatient shrug and dropped the subject. "Anyway, as you've guessed, my mother had marriage plans for me. I didn't understand it until much later. I knew they couldn't afford it, but when they sent me to an expensive girls' school in Exeter when I was fifteen, I honestly thought they wanted me to go there for an education. Not so I could become some wealthy family's governess, either, but so I could be a
scholar.
Like my father. I really believed it." She shook her head, and beyond the amused self-mockery he could see the remnants of a still-deep personal hurt.

"I had underestimated my mother's ambition, but eventually I understood. A coming-out in London was out of the question for me, but she was working early on the next best thing—cultivating friends of the right sort who
would
come out. And these friends would have beaus, or brothers or cousins or friends, one of whom I—I—"

"Would snag."

She nodded. "Once I understood the conspiracy, I entered into it willingly enough. You see, I was a shallow thing after all. I wanted to please my parents. I wanted them to be proud of me."

"That's not such a sin."

"Isn't it? I think it depends on the consequences. In this case, I think you'll agree that a sin of sorts was committed."

"No," he said, "I won't. But even if you're right, I think you'll agree that the sinner has paid a penance far out of proportion to her sin."

"I won't—"

"Let's argue the fine moral points later," he suggested. "What happened next? You met Lydia, I suppose."

"Yes. Under . . . memorable circumstances. I walked into the lavatory one night and found her trying to cut her wrists with a letter opener."

"Good God."

"She hadn't really been in my set before, my circle of friends, but after that night I felt responsible for her, I suppose. She was so very unhappy."

"Why?"

"Oh . . ." She lifted her shoulders, as if the task