Daughter of Darkness (32 page)

‘It doesn’t take much to realize what happened,’ his father said quietly. ‘Caroline was never the same after Marietta was reported dead. I’d thought the birth of her daughter would bring her joy, but it did not. She was already dead inside.’

It was almost as if he was talking to himself.

‘Caroline became bitter after her daughter was born. I felt sorry for the poor little thing, but I did not think— ?’

‘Think what?’ Gerard asked when his father opened his eyes.

Ambrose could not bring himself to soil the memory of Caroline to her son. What would it achieve to tell him? His former wife had probably been forced into it. He should have had the courage to call the marquis out, for his efforts at peacemaking had come to naught.

‘Oh, nothing of importance.’ He uttered a heavy sigh, realizing his cowardice had weighed heavily on his conscience all these years. ‘It’s too late to change the past. I could have been a better husband, perhaps.’

His father’s unspoken words confirmed what Gerard had only suspected. His sister had been fathered by the marquis, and his father knew it.’

‘That may be true.’ Tears in his eyes, Gerard stooped to hug his father. ‘But you couldn’t have been a better father to your sons. No man could.’

The images faded from the crystal, and despite her worry about Edward, Willow smiled. Taking up her drawing tablet she quickly sketched a series of scenes. Adding them to her previous sketch, she rolled them up and secured them with a violet ribbon. She handed the roll of drawings to Bella, instructing her to take them to Sapphire.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Heart beating nervously, she bade her mother enter.

Sapphire had discarded her plain black dress for one of soft grey. She was unveiled, her eyes unguarded as they gazed at her. Troubled and unsure, Willow knew they mirrored her own.

‘You have the ability to tune into my thoughts,’ Sapphire said slowly.

It was the admission she’d sought. Her mother had suffered so much that she was afraid to allow herself to love, she was thinking. What if she’s too proud to allow me to love her?

Pain suddenly rioted through her body. Not her own pain, she realized. It was her mother’s she experienced. Something dark haunted her depths. She was putting a protective force between them.

Willow took a tentative step forward, nearly crying out with the agony of her mother’s soul. Sapphire was retreating behind the barrier she’d created between them. Tension quivered like menace waiting to strike, warning her to keep the distance between them intact. It was the power binding Sapphire to the old ways.

So close, yet so far. Willow felt like crying. Don’t try and repel me, her heart cried out. Let me love you.

You’ve chosen your path, Sapphire told herself. You must find the courage to see it through to the end.

Willow reached out to her. ‘Take my hands,’ her daughter implored. ‘I’m of your flesh, and will help to make you whole.’

Something in Sapphire seemed to snap and she drew her daughter into her arms. As each experienced the love of the other, tears ran unashamedly down their faces.

‘Oh, my dear,’ Sapphire said softly. ‘I’d sacrifice the rest of my life for just this one moment of joy.’

It took only a moment to realize it was exactly what she had done.

Sheronwood looked as deserted as the last time they’d been there. Although the soldiers searched the house from top to bottom it was of no avail. There was no sign of Edward, and the view from the upper windows revealed the cove was empty of shipping.

The tide was in. Seawater surged through the entrance to the cove and smashed against the cliff face in clouds of white spray. Despairingly, Gerard concluded they were too late. Nevertheless, they prised the boards from the cellar door and descended into the depths of the house. The entrance to the tunnels was boarded up, as they’d been for several years. Dredging a memory from his childhood, he remembered a series of steps led steeply downwards.

Earlier generations of the de Vere family had used Sheronwood for smuggling. There was a labyrinth of tunnels, most of which came to a dead end. Some joined one to another in case an escape route was needed. One ended behind a secret door in the ballroom paneling, another led to the cave on the beach. A branch tunnel terminated in a chamber with a small window-like aperture set just above high tide in the cliff-face. It had been a look out. When the tide was exceptionally high, most of the tunnel network flooded.

Aided by the smugglers map on display in the library, he’d had explored them once. He’d been five, and had clung tightly to the hand of Daphne’s father, scared he’d lose contact and be left alone in the dark. Not long afterwards the tunnels had been blocked by a fall and the cellar entrance boarded up. He grinned as he looked around. He’d been allowed to make a copy of the map, and that exercise was still imprinted on his brain. When Jeffrey was growing up he’d impressed his brother with highly embellished tales of his adventures in the caves.

A shout from Anthony chased the nostalgia from his eyes ‘The boards are on a pivot and move to one side.’

Gerard was the first down the steps, followed closely by Anthony. They carried lanterns. The soldiers were quite content to keep watch. He briefly wondered how many bottles of Sheronwood wine would be opened in the barracks that night, then decided it would be worth it if he could get Edward back. ‘Be careful,’ he warned Anthony. ‘The tunnels are blocked, and there may have been more falls.’

‘If the tunnels are blocked, where’s the draught coming from?’

‘Listen!’ The officer ran into his back when he suddenly stopped and held up his hand. He could have sworn he’d heard a child sobbing above the roar of the waves.

‘I hear nothing but the sea.’ Anthony sounded nervous. ‘How far into the tunnels does the water intrude? It sounds extremely close, and high tide is yet an hour away.’

‘An hour? Are you sure?’ He turned and gaze at him doubtfully. ‘The tide was high when we came in.’

‘It will be exceptionally high today. We had a full moon a couple of nights ago and can expect a spring tide.’

A roaring sound filled Gerard’ s ears, and it was not the sea. Suddenly, he knew where Edward was being held. The marquis was diabolical. Even as he wondered how a man could be so lacking in compassion as to leave a child to drown, Gerard was deciding to kill him. He’d follow his enemy to France, if need be.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Anthony. ‘I know where the child is. If I fail to return, tell my wife— ‘ A cry of fright clearly reached his ears, then another from a different source, as if one had infected another. It was joined by a third.

‘It sounds as though you’ll need me, friend.’ Anthony poked him in the back. ‘Lead on. I hope you’ve a nose for direction and speed. I have the feeling we’ll need it.’

A sour odor of damp seaweed lingered in the tunnels. The flickering lanterns gave a glimpse of a line on the wall that denoted an ominously high tide at some time in the past. The wind that howled up the tunnel at the approach of each breaker was cold, and smelt of salt. It struck Gerard that he and Anthony would drown in the tunnels if he took a wrong turn. When they were forced to struggle through swirling, knee high water, he was tempted to turn back.

Then he heard Edward call Willow’s name. There was such desperation in the child’s voice he knew he must not fail him. At the very least, he owed Daphne the life of her son. Spray from the sea was crashing through the aperture when they finally found the chamber. The children were huddled together in a corner, water sucking at their feet.

‘Jesus help us!’ Anthony exclaimed.

‘We’ve no time for praying, man.’ Gerard picked up the nearest child and swung her on to his shoulders. ‘Hold tight,’ he instructed. Edward’s eyes were fever bright, his body hot and shaking when he grabbed him up and cuddled him against his body. Edward gave a cry of recognition as he clung for safety against his chest. Warmth spread through Gerard when he gazed down at the child, but he had no time to analyse it. ‘I hope you can managed the other two,’ he muttered, wishing the child on his shoulders had not taken his order quite so literally when her fingers wound tightly in his hair.

They barely had time to clear the chamber when a wave crashed through the aperture and set it awash. Water pursued them halfway up the tunnel and swirled chest high before it receded with a menacing hiss. The children’s terrified screams were nerve-wracking. Gerard barked at them for silence.

‘That was close.’ The
sangfroid
in Anthony’s voice was at odds with his earlier nervousness, as if he’d put his courage to the test and come out intact. ‘I admit I’m not overly fond of confined spaces, so let’s make haste before your lantern extinguishes itself. I dropped mine in the scramble up the tunnel.’

The soldiers looked astonished when their saturated figures emerged from the tunnel.
‘

God’s truth!’
one of them exclaimed, scratching his head. ‘I thought we was looking for the young marquis. Where did all them brats come from?’

After the children had been transported to Lytton House, fed on chicken broth and made tidy, they were interviewed by Anthony Dowling. A soldier was dispatched to seek out the woman hired as the children’s gaoler, who’d fled into the surrounding countryside when she’d heard them arrive.

The two boys, aged about nine and ten, were brothers, and had lived for the past two years in a London whorehouse, till their mother had died. The girl said she’d been taken to a house in London by her father, who was a gravedigger. She was able to itemize recognizable features of the house, then more falteringly, and with Willow’s tearful encouragement, told of her father’s death before describing the man who’d abused her. Each one implicated Marquis Lynchcross. Edward had been lucky, he thought.

‘I’ll send a dispatch rider with my report to General Marriot at the break of dawn,’ Anthony said with satisfaction. ‘The activities of the marquis are now over. I’m at a loss of what to do with the children, though.’

‘If we adopted my plan to start a village orphanage… ?’ Willow’s voice trailed off when Gerard frowned at her. He’d already explained there was not the funds for the purpose at this time, but the fact that he’d given her the three hundred guinea purse for the purpose had heartened her. ‘It’s for you to decide, of course, Gerard.’ She smiled at Anthony, reducing him to a speechless wreck. ‘You’ll excuse me, Captain. I must go and see Edward. He’s still distressed.’ Her eyes sent Gerard an entreaty before the door closed behind her.

After she’d gone, Gerard crossed to the window and stared at the grounds of his home. If not for an accident of birth, both he and Jeffrey might be in the same position as these children. He did not have it in him to send them back to be abused again by unscrupulous men like the marquis. ‘I’ll see if the boys would prefer to stay and be trained into employment here,’ he said with a shrug. ‘At least they’ll be fed and clothed. As for the girl, she seems a bright little thing, and polite. Mrs. Tupworthy is looking for a companion for her daughter. No doubt, she’ll offer her a home.’

Later, in the privacy of their chambers, he told Willow what he’d arranged for the children. He was the recipient of a loving look, and a hug as reward. Delighted as she was with his news, he could see she was bursting with news of her own as she crossed to the chair he occupied. ‘I have need to confide something to you, Gerard.’ The sparkling excitement in her eyes belied the gravity in her voice. ‘I can hardly believe what has happened.’

‘What is it, my love?’ He guessed what it was, but didn’t have the heart to take the joy of her telling it away from her.

‘It’s, Sapphire. She’s not Sapphire—she’s Marietta Givanchy.’

‘First she is Sapphire, then she’s not.’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Then you tell me she’s somebody else.’ Tempted to laugh, he managed to keep his face blank. He tipped up her chin and tenderly kissed her. ‘What enigma is this, my sweeting?’

‘No enigma.’ He loved the way her lips clung to his and the small flare of desire in her eyes. Impatience replaced it. ‘Do you not see? Sapphire is my mother. She did not die after all, and came to Lytton to find me. Is that not wonderful?’

‘It’s wonderful indeed.’ He wouldn’t enlighten her to the fact that her mother had come her to take her revenge on his father.’ He noticed she was wearing the pink velvet robe with the fur trim, under it the chemise trimmed with pink rosebuds, and pulled her on to his lap. ‘Tell me how you came to discover Sapphire was your mother.’

‘It began when she gave me a small crystal ball… ‘

The fur began to tickle his nose. He begged her remove the robe before he sneezed.

‘I did not see anything at first… ‘

Her breasts were level with his mouth whilst he listened to her talk. He amused himself breathing on them, watching the nipples harden like sweet, ripe berries.

‘If you’re to listen to my story we’ll be more comfortable on the bed,’ she said huskily as she rose to her feet. ‘My rear end is painful from riding… if you would be good enough to inspect it for blisters before I continue my tale?’

Gerard
would
be good enough. When he’d finished his inspection he pronounced her free of blemish, except for a small crescent shaped scar adorning the curve of her waist. Pressing his lips against it, he felt her shudder, and remembered how she’d come about the blemish. Hands curving around her buttocks, he brought her, legs astride, back down to his lap. ‘Do you think you could ride another mile with me?’ he whispered, tracing the perimeters of her luscious mouth with his tongue.

‘A mile?’ Her eyes widened with desire. A provocative smile curved her lips and she said a trifle wickedly. ‘It’s for you to command and me to obey, husband.’

Spring—1755—Summer

‘Gerard must speak to the gardeners.’ Edwina decapitated a flower bloom with her cane. ‘Look at these weeds, they’re a disgrace.’

‘It’s a Marguerite daisy, Grandmother.’

‘Nonsense.’ Giving Willow a disapproving look, Edwina settled back in her chair. ‘I know a dandelion when I see one.’