Authors: Masquerade
"Gilly! You can see he's in no condition to
ride anywhere." She glanced to where James was pulling on his
shirt, his features contorted with pain. Phaedra started to rush to
his aid, then stopped. She would be damned if she lifted one finger
to help him with this madness.
"In any case," Gilly said, "I don't know how
you think I'd be after stopping the man, short of brute force."
"I don't advise you to try it, Fitzhurst,"
James growled, his fingers fumbling with the buttons.
Phaedra glanced from one man to the other.
James’ face was set; Gilly's was equally obstinate. Her shoulders
slumped with defeat. She turned to her cousin.
"If you won't stop him, I want you to go with
him."
"I don't need a blasted nurse," James said as
he located his boots.
"Don't fret," Gilly flung back. "You're not
getting one." He looked at Phaedra. "Are you mad, Fae? Do you think
I'd be after leaving you to tend a sick old man and with that
Goodfellow business still hanging fire in the courts?"
"It will be all right," she said. "I will
have Jonathan to help me.”
The skeptical look that passed between James
and Gilly showed clearly what they both thought of Jonathan's
capabilities.
"Pay her no heed," James said. "I will manage
quite well on my own."
"No, you won't!" Phaedra stomped her foot,
impatient with all these arrogant male heroics and stupidity.
"Gilly, please, after all my grandfather has done, I feel that I
owe-"
"You don't owe me a damned thing." James
cursed savagely as he painfully thrust his foot into a boot.
But Phaedra clutched at Gilly's arm, giving
him that melting look she knew he could not resist. "He'll never
make it alone,"Phaedra whispered. "He'll break open that wound and
bleed to death somewhere on the road."
Gilly exuded a deep sigh. "I suppose the
journey would take but a fortnight at most." His gaze traveled
ruefully toward James. "But it will not be easy. His lairdship
doesn't take too kindly to the notion of my company."
"You can go or stay. It is all the same to
me." James jammed his heel into the other boot. "But don't expect
any gratitude. I will likely curse you every league of the
way."
"I have been cursed frequently, Englishman,"
Gilly said. "In more tongues than you are master of."
When she saw Gilly relenting, Phaedra gave
him an impulsive hug. While James gathered up the rest of his
belongings, Gilly treated her to a stern lecture. "While I am gone,
you keep to yourself and out of mischief. No matter what happens, I
don't want you making any noble gestures. No heroic confessions,
coz."
"Of course not," Phaedra said, avoiding
meeting Gilly's eyeS. She knew she would do whatever she deemed
necessary.
"Make her promise." Although he had never so
much as glanced around, Phaedra was startled by both James's
perception and his strained command.
When her vague pledges of good conduct did
not satisfy Gilly either, she snapped, "Oh, very well, I swear it
in blood. I will keep silent. I hope that satisfies the pair of
you."
Gilly grinned. "Then be off with you while I
change my own clothes. I am not so free and easy before the ladies
as Jamey lad. My extreme modesty, you know."
James glared at Gilly, a blush overtaking his
pale cheeks.
It was a bare half-hour later when Phaedra
trailed after the two men to the small stable yard at the back of
Jonathan's house. The grooms had fetched both Nemesis and Gilly's
sorrel.
After bestowing upon her a brisk hug, Gilly
mounted his horse.
Phaedra was relieved to see that James was
looking stronger, although still quite strained. She wanted to help
him up into the saddle, but knew he would resent the gesture. His
expression caused her heart to break.
She saw no trace of warmth in his face-no
trace of the man she'd known. His mouth appeared so hardened she
doubted if he would ever smile again. Ever since she had given him
the news of his sister, all fragments of youthfulness had
disappeared. Suddenly Phaedra envisioned him as an aging,
embittered man, ever bound to his angry resentment. She had tried
to break those chains for him, but now she saw that she had
attempted the impossible.
It was so ironic. Both of them had sought a
freedom-he from memories, she from dependence upon any man. But he
would never know his freedom, and she didn't want hers.
As he reached for Nemesis's reins, he paused,
his gaze drawn back to her against his will. "It would seem," he
said, "that this is farewell."
She nodded numbly. "I wish you ... " What was
there for her to wish him? She doubted he would find any happiness
in his reunion with his sister, a broken woman, so mad she would
not even know him. "I wish you peace, James Lethington," she
finished sadly.
He vaulted into the saddle, his eyes empty,
his voice hard. "I won't find it. Not this side of the grave."
Without waiting to see if Gilly followed, he
reined Nemesis about and was gone.
A fortnight passed. Sawyer Weylin improved
enough for Phaedra to consider moving him back to Blackheath.
Jonathan, however, argued vehemently against it.
"Your grandfather will never again be strong
enough to leave his bed. It will be entirely too much for you to
cope with that vast house and an invalid."
"But we have burdened you with our presence
here long enough," Phaedra protested.
"Never!" Jonathan pressed a fervent kiss
against her hand. "It has been the greatest happiness of my life to
have you safe beneath my roof."
Phaedra disengaged her hand. "I want my
grandfather to spend his last days in his own house." She did not
add that she had another reason, equally compelling. The look in
Jonathan's eyes had waxed far too ardent of late. She had no desire
to give the man false hope. She herself had known too much of that
kind of pain to inflict it upon Jonathan.
Although Jonathan continued to resist the
notion, Phaedra prevailed in the end, and her grandfather was
conveyed back to his cherished Heath. September had come, but the
summer did not slowly dissolve into fall; it died. The
summer-Phaedra's season of fire and love, had snatched away all its
greenery and warmth and fled. The chill of autumn blighted the
Heath's gardens; brittle leaves and withered stalks now stood•
where the roses had bloomed. To Phaedra it was like watching the
promise of life itself dying, the passing of dreams that were to
never come again.
She began to fear that returning to the Heath
had been a mistake. It did not give her grandfather the ease that
she had hoped, and his condition seemed to worsen with each passing
day. He spoke less and slept more, and the right side of his body
was paralyzed. In spite of Weylin's dreadful crime, and the pain
the old man's ambitions had brought both herself and James, Phaedra
could not help pitying him.
Never before had she realized how much her
grandfather's presence had filled the Heath. It was as though the
ostentatious, overlarge rooms had been scaled to match his enormous
bulk and blustery temperament. Now he was but a sunken shadow of
himself, and the vast house seemed like a suit of clothes that no
longer fit.
At least the cool winds of autumn had eased
tempers somewhat. For a long time, Phaedra had gone in dread of
another attack upon her grandfather. Despite her promise to James
and Gilly, she had been fully prepared to confess that she was
Robin Goodfellow. But the Londoners were quick to find new
interests, and the Gazetteer and Goodfellow were both forgotten in
the heat of new political matters. The king and his ministers were
now being harried by the prospect that France would almost
certainly sign a treaty with the American colonists. Jessym had
paid a fine and been duly released.
Phaedra was astonished with what indifference
she received the news of colonial affairs. Once she would have been
ecstatic to hear of the treaty with France, certain that with such
aid the colonists would be bound to emerge victorious. In a burst
of enthusiasm, she would have reached for her quill to applaud
France's intervention. But now she regarded all such political
tidings with indifference. The struggle for liberty being waged
across the sea seemed but a small matter compared with her own
heartbreak.
Because no housekeeper had been engaged to
replace Hester Searle, Phaedra filled her own days by directing the
servants' activities at the Heath. She found herself increasingly
grateful for such mundane tasks, and she had neither the heart nor
the mind for greater exertion. Listlessness had taken possession of
her. She was frequently ill, especially upon rising in the
morning.
At first she had supposed her fatigue was
merely so much stress, finally taking its toll upon her. But when
she studied her body in the mirror, she was forced to admit that
the tenderness of her breasts and the slight thickening of her
waist were not caused by any illness. She could no longer delude
herself. She was with child.
After her initial shock, she experienced a
rush of anger at the perversity of fate. How oft she had longed for
a child! The prospect of knowing a mother's joy had been the only
reason she had ever tolerated those brief, humiliating couplings
with Ewan. And now she was carrying the child of the man she loved,
yet the knowledge filled her with sorrow and dread.
How would James react when she told him?
Phaedra doubted that she would ever know, for she had a feeling
that when he found his sister, he would never return. Two weeks had
stretched into a month with still no word from him or Gilly. She
wondered why her cousin had not at least returned. Surely it could
not be taking this long to locate Julianna. Phaedra suppressed a
dread that they had found the girl in worse condition than anyone
could possibly have imagined.
Turning away from the mirror, Phaedra dressed
herself, feeling more depressed than ever. She went down to her
grandfather's study. She felt an intruder there, but someone had to
keep track of the accounts and see that the bills were paid.
Shortly after returning to the Heath, she had taken on the
task.
It was not so difficult, considering her
grandfather's meticulous accounting. She had even located a private
ledger in which he had recorded with great detail, every sum, every
item he had sent to Mrs. Link for the care of Julianna
Lethington.
After Phaedra finished toting up the
reckonings of the household expenses, she proceeded to clean out
the center drawer. Jonathan had very kindly offered to take charge
of all matters dealing with Weylin's many investments, an offer she
had gratefully accepted.
But as she stacked up record book after
record book, she felt saddened. Was this all that her grandfather
had to show for his life? It all seemed so impersonal, these
ledgers with the entries made in his crabbed handwriting.
She had come to the bottom of the pile when
she felt something cold and hard in the back of the drawer. She
drew forth two objects, realizing with some surprise that she held
miniature portraits in gilt frames.
The first of these represented a young woman
whose features bore such striking resemblance to Phaedra's father,
she did not doubt that she gazed upon a likeness of her
grandmother. Corinda Weylin had deep, cornflower-blue eyes, just
like George Weylin. But the hair wisping about her sweet face was a
soft brown, not the red-gold Phaedra once had guessed.
She set that portrait aside. It was the other
that most intrigued and puzzled her. She studied the stocky young
man with the belligerent tilt of his chin, suggesting that he had
scant time for this nonsense of posing for the artist. It took a
few moments for her to recognize her grandfather's features in the
stubborn set of the lips and heavy eyelids. Most startling of all
was the thatch of red-gold hair that waved back from his brow.
Phaedra fingered a lock of her own fiery
curls, a wry smile curving her lips. All those times that he had
groused at her about the color of her hair! Her lips parted to
laugh, but to her surprise a sob escaped her instead. She bowed her
forehead against her arm, her flood of tears wetting the scarred
oak surface of the desk.
Lost in the release of her pent-up emotion,
Phaedra did not realize she was no longer alone until she felt a
light touch upon her hair.
"Phaedra?"
She jerked upright to meet Jonathan's
concerned gaze. Wiping hastily at her eyes, she said "Oh,
J-Jonathan. You startled me."
"I knocked, but I fear you didn't hear
me."
"I but laid my head down on the desk to rest
a bit and... " She allowed her voice to trail off, realizing how
ridiculous it was to try to deceive him when she knew her face must
be splotched and red with weeping.
"My dear!" Jonathan regarded her with deep,
mournful eyes as he brushed away the last of the moisture from her
cheek. "I should never have let you return to this gloomy house.
You are never happy here."
"I am all right," she said, drawing back from
his touch. "I was only feeling a bit depressed about Grandfather,
that is all."
"Aye, my poor old friend. It saddens me to
see him thus, too."
Yet Jonathan's gaunt features assumed a look
more anxious than melancholy. "I hope you have never blamed me for
what happened that night. For not permitting you to tell Sawyer the
truth about Robin Goodfellow."
"Of course not," she said wearily. She rose
from the desk. "I have gathered together the ledgers that you need.
Here they are.”
But Jonathan's eyes never wavered from her
face. "My dear, you do not look at all well. I must insist upon
your seeing my physician."
"It would do no good. I fear I am past all
curing."
She regretted the bitter words when she saw
Jonathan pale with alarm. She started to pass off her comment as a
foolish jest, but she could not seem to speak past the lump in her
throat. She felt so desperately alone. Added to the strain of
worrying about James and of trying to care for her grandfather, she
was now burdened with another dread secret. She feared she would go
mad if she did not confide in someone.