To Have and to Hold (40 page)

Inside, he found his mother in her second favorite place, supine on a Louis Quinze chaise longue in the tower drawing room. (Her favorite was in bed in her lavish boudoir, from which she rarely rose before three or four in the afternoon.) She was, as always, impeccably coifed, her stunning silver hair upswept and gleaming. And why not? She employed a hairdresser full-time; a Mrs. Peabody—she lived on the premises in a private suite, and traveled with her ladyship wherever she went.

At present her ladyship was either dozing or writing a letter, or possibly both at once, and the recipient of the letter would undoubtedly be one of her lovers. Sebastian wondered sometimes why his parents hadn't been happier together or liked each other better; they ought to have, considering how much they had in common. Lady--Moreton was just as faithless as her husband, and only differed from him in that regard because she incorporated a soupcon of discretion into the conduct of her numerous love affairs. Sebastian had been fifteen when he'd discovered for certain that she was promiscuous, on the morning he'd walked into the stables and found her in a compromising attitude with not one but two undergrooms on the straw floor of a loose-box stall. He'd countered the shock by immediately seducing the housemaid, and after that, as many women as time and circumstances allowed, a habit he'd maintained steadfastly ever since.

Until Rachel.

"Is it dinnertime?"

The languid inquiry came from the window seat, where his sister was slumped, drowsy-eyed, over a game of solitaire. That was industrious for her; normally she did nothing at all in her idle hours—which was most of them; the notion of Irene mending, sketching, or—ha—reading a book was quite unthinkable.

"Not that I know of," Sebastian drawled, whereupon his sister instantly lost interest in him and went back to her game.

He walked to the drinks table and poured a small glass of neat whiskey. Sipping it, he regarded his mother and sister, neither of whom seemed aware of his presence any longer, or indeed, of each other's. It was easy to imagine them sitting in this room for hours without exchanging a word. Sebastian had been home for half a day, and so far his mother had exchanged about five sentences with him. What an odd family they were—he supposed; since he'd known no other, he could only take it on faith that in other people's families people talked and listened to each other, laughed, cried, shouted, made up. Loved. He thought of the evenings he'd spent in Rachel's company—the public hours, not the ones in his bedroom. She liked to listen to him play the piano, and he liked to look at her face when she did. She would put her head back against the sofa and close her eyes, and presently a sweet smile would soften her straight, solemn mouth. Other times, she would read to him from her current book, and the rich, low, expressive sound of her voice was as sensually satisfying to him as piano music was to her. He'd taken those quiet, contented hours for granted, and now he missed them. Missed her.

"Where's Harry? Where are the children?"

Irene lifted her dark, sleek head and blinked at him. "Harry? He's at home, of course. With the children. Why would they be here?"

Sebastian shrugged. Why indeed? Irene was no more motherly than her own mother. If he asked her quickly and caught her off guard, he doubted if she could tell him how many children she had. Four, he thought, but possibly it was five by now. She was three years older than he. When he was twenty, he'd brought an Oxford chum home for Christmas holiday, and found him in bed with Irene on Boxing Day morning. "Join us?" she'd asked, stroking a bare breast to entice him. He'd declined the invitation politely. But from then on he'd had her measure.

Clearly, sexual licentiousness ran in the family, and Sebastian had spent the last decade or so trying to live up to his heritage. It occurred to him, not for the first time but more forcefully than ever before, that they might all fly to the arms of their illicit lovers in search of warmth, some human touch, a little companionship, commodities not noticeably abundant at home. Or was that only a rationale for cupidity?

The sun was setting over the Doric columns of the summer house at the edge of the deer park. He walked to the window to watch its slow descent. Lynton Hall had a derelict pavilion east of the house, no match for Steyne's pretentious "belvedere." Rachel had found the new dairymaid there one night, she'd told him, sleeping inside instead of in the house because she hated enclosed spaces. Sidony, her name was; her father had beaten and abused her. Here at Steyne, servants were faceless, nameless, interchangeable; if they had stories to tell, no one above-stairs ever heard them.

A sudden and unexpected wave of longing washed over him. In its wake he realized what it was: homesickness.

"Mother, what's your purpose in life?"

Lady Moreton turned her head in slow, increasingly incredulous degrees, while the pen in her hand made a spreading ink blot on her love letter. "My what?"

"You know, your reason for existing. Your
raison d'etre.
You've heard of the concept, I'm sure."

Her handsome eyebrows arched disdainfully. "What an unpleasant person you've grown into, Sebastian."

"Yes, quite. But back to the question."

"Don't be impudent."

"Impudent?"

"Don't be an ass," Irene clarified, rousing herself to a sitting position.

He turned to her interestedly. "What's your purpose, Irene?"

She looked at him for a full ten seconds, her brows drawn together in ferocious thought. He saw the emptiness in her eyes before they could skitter away in pique. "What's yours?" she retaliated unkindly.

"I think it's to use the few talents I've been given to try to do something good in my small corner of the cosmos. And to be happy without hurting any more people than absolutely necessary."

Modest, even banal goals, but it was as if he'd said he wanted to become a vegetarian Buddhist monk. The family resemblance was remarkable when mother and daughter lifted identically elegant top lips and sneered at him, unanimous in their contempt. They might be in league against him for the moment, but only because it was convenient; usually they couldn't stand each other.

No question about it, his family was peculiar. Beyond eccentric; perverse. "Motherly love" was a given in other people's houses, but not this one, where her ladyship loved no one but herself, and had passed the proclivity on to her daughter. To her son, too, although lately he'd risen above it. There was someone now he cared for more than himself.

The butler came in then to announce dinner. During the brief, largely silent meal, no more was said about life goals, his or anyone else's.

Lord Moreton's funeral the next morning wasn't nearly as well attended as Reverend Ashe had prophesied, and all the mourners were dry-eyed. The widow couldn't be bothered to extend any hospitality to them afterward; they dispersed from the church (no one except Sebastian stayed for the interment) like aimless sheep, probably asking themselves why they'd come, since they hadn't gotten so much as a glass of sherry for their trouble.

In the afternoon, the lawyers read the will. There were no surprises: Sebastian inherited everything.

At a meeting with Sewell, his father's land agent, investment advisor, and the closest thing he'd had to a friend, Sebastian learned that "everything" was a sizable fortune. For such an irresponsible man, Lord Moreton had run up remarkably few debts, a testament
to
the business acumen of Mr. Sewell, Sebastian suspected, as much as to the magnitude of the Verlaine family fortune.

One of his lordship's few passions in life had been the petty one of keeping his family on a short financial leash, reveling in their bitterness and complaints. His wife and daughter had constantly badgered him for more money, bigger allowances, a larger dowry. But Sebastian couldn't stand giving him the satisfaction and had kept silent, living within his means, which by any objective standard were considerable. Now it was all his, the title, the houses, the farm estate, the investments, and all the capital.

Sewell was a smooth, sleek, well-spoken man who had grown wealthy in his own right as the old earl's chief steward. Sebastian couldn't help wondering in what other ways he differed from his own bailiff, William Holyoake, who was burly and rough-edged— and honest to a fault.

Two days and three nights later, after poring over half a dozen years of books, records, accounts ledgers, and receipts, he thought he had the answer: honesty was the only quality the two men had in common.

It was a relief. The longer he stayed at Steyne Court, the less he wanted to do with it; the fact that he could leave the management of it in Sewell's capable hands without worrying made his probable abandonment of his ancestral home much easier to justify.

Then, too, try as he might, he couldn't picture Rachel here, ever, under any circumstances. The coldness, the formality, his family's shallow heartless-ness—everything about Steyne was antithetical to her. "Perhaps I would do better as your London mistress," she had said once. But in truth, he could only see Rachel at Lynton, in the pretty village that had somehow become his home. Wyckerley was the only place that deserved her.

The night before he was to leave, he called his mother and sister into the drawing room and told them what he had decided to do. To his mother he gave Steyne Court and all its valuable contents; he gave his sister Belle Pre, the house in Surrey. The London town house he would keep for himself, although they were free to visit it whenever they liked, as long as he wasn't in residence at the time. In addition, he was settling a yearly sum on them, forty thousand pounds for his mother, sixty thousand for Irene—because she had a family—which they would have in perpetuity, to do with as they wished. He advised them to use the money wisely, since it was all they would get from him.

They grumbled a little for the sake of form, but he could tell they were pleased. They ought to be. Not only was it a generous settlement, a fortune compared to what they'd been able to squeeze out of the old man, it had the added advantage of making further contact among the three of them superfluous indefinitely, for any but the most extreme social circumstances—the funeral of the next one of them to die, for example. It was perfect.

As he was leaving the room, it occurred to his mother to ask him what he would do now, where he intended to live.

"I'll live at Lynton," he replied.

"Lynton!" the two women exclaimed in unison. They looked appalled. "But I've heard it's a dreadful place," his sister protested. "Falling down, depressing, no society whatsoever. How could you mean to live there, Sebastian?"

He might have answered glibly, but it was a fair question; six short months ago, he'd have been in sympathy with Irene's consternation. "I mean to live there as well as I can," he answered. "Between my own investments and Sewell's, plus what's left from the rents on Steyne Farm, I should think I'll live very well indeed." That made sense to them; they nodded knowingly until he added, "I can demolish a lot of derelict Lynton tenant cottages now and build new ones. There's a prototype steam thresher I've been wanting to try out on the estate, and a pen of about eighty big Romney Marsh ewes I've had my eye on for a time. Holyoake, my bailiff, has been after me to repair the oast house and make some renovations to the dairy parlor. We need a new barn for castrating the pigs, too," he confided. "Last spring they kicked the old one to pieces."

Neither his mother nor his sister could speak.

"Well, good night," he told them, and went up to bed.

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The journey home was interminable. He was obliged to ride to Dover for a direct train to London, and then he had to change in Reading, in Bristol, and again in Exeter. The farther he traveled from Rye, the more remote and unreal his family problems began to seem. Rachel had never been far from his thoughts, but as the train labored through the Black Down Hills of Somerset and entered the wooded river glens of Devon, she began to obsess them.

He thought he understood now what had drawn him to her in the first place. He'd seen her as the opposite of himself, and he'd wanted her to save him. Simple as that. She'd stood in his mind for survival, because she'd been through hellfire and come out strong and whole, indestructible. What had he ever suffered? Except for a drunken duel or two, he'd never faced death or even danger; in all of his wasted, numbing, unmanning life he'd never stood up for any principle except libertarianism. His plan had been to use her, but personally risk nothing. Take, but not give. He'd felt a perverse delight in her helplessness, the condition he'd relied on in cold blood to have her.

But her helplessness had become intolerable to both of them. He'd come to want her willingly, not under duress. Had he ever had her willingly?

He couldn't even tell her he loved her. He'd said it once, on a kind of exhausted sigh after they'd made love. Even then, he'd equivocated: "I'm
falling
in love with you," he'd said, and when she couldn't respond, he'd regretted his impetuosity—his insanity, as it had seemed to him then—and never repeated it. On the night he'd left Lynton for Rye, she'd needed to hear those words as never before, and he couldn't say them. He wasn't
falling
in love any longer, he was passionately in love, which made the admission even riskier. She'd called him a coward that night, among other things. Was it true?