Виктория Холт - The Landower Legacy

“Your forget you have my daughter here.”

“I’m sorry she has such a father.”

“I shall not allow you to keep her.”

I felt a sudden fear in the pit of my stomach. What could he do? He was, after all, her father.

As usual when I was afraid I was immediately on the defensive.

“If you attempted to take her from me I should probe into your financial affairs. I should discover the details of your liaison with Flora Carnaby—and doubtless others. I should provoke such a scandal which would kill off all your future chances of securing an heiress. You would be finished, Jeremy Brandon. I have the money to make sure of that— and I should not hesitate to use it.”

He was white and trembling and I saw that he was frightened.

“I will give you a word of advice although you don’t deserve it,” I went on. “Go away … and never let me hear of you again. I don’t know how much of Olivia’s money you have left. I should salvage what you can. You’ll probably lose it all at one stroke at the gaming tables. But who knows, you might be lucky. Whether you rise out of the ashes or are ruined, I don’t want to know. All I ask is that you go away from here and I never see you again.”

He stood looking at me—lost and beaten.

I saw him differently, shorn of his bravado. I imagined his coming onto the London scene, a younger son with very little money but outstanding good looks and an undoubted grace and charm. I could imagine his dreams, his ambitions.

Now he had been utterly humiliated and I had done this.

I couldn’t help feeling the tiniest glimmer of remorse, which I suppressed immediately.

This was my triumph and I was going to savour it to the full.

He left me.

He must have stayed the night at an inn and gone back to London the next day.

The news spread rapidly. How did they learn such things? How much of my scene with Jeremy had been overheard, how much guessed at?

Paul was waiting for me next morning when I rode out to visit one of the farms where there was a little trouble over some land. There was no mistaking his relief.

“So it is over!” he cried.

“How did you know?”

“Heaven knows. Gwennie talks of nothing else.”

“I expect she got it from one of your servants who got it from one of ours.”

“Where is unimportant. All that matters is that it is over.”

“You couldn’t have thought seriously for a moment …”

“You let me believe.”

“Because you knew me so little as to imagine it could possibly be true.”

“And all the time …”

“All the time I intended to do just what I did.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I had to live the part while I was playing it. Besides, I liked to see you jealous. I liked you to feel that you had lost me.”

“Caroline!”

“I’m realizing I’m not a very admirable character. I hurt him terribly … and I revelled in it.”

“He had hurt you.”

“Still I delighted in … revenge.”

“And you are repentant now?”

“Sometimes we don’t know ourselves very well. I thought I was going to enjoy hurting him … turning the knife in the wound as it were … and when the time came, I did it. I blazed at him. I wounded him, humiliated him, far more than he ever had me. He let me down lightly. He was courteous all the time. I just went for him like a harridan … a virago.”

“My dearest Caroline, you had been provoked. And he was after your fortune now as he had been before.”

I said bitterly: “He would not be the first man to marry for money, for what his wife could bring him.”

He was silent and I went on: “But who are any of us to judge others. I feel drained now … just rather sad. I was buoyed up by my plans to hurt, to wound, and now it’s over and I don’t really feel any great satisfaction.”

He said: “When I thought you were going to marry him, I was desperate, ready to do anything to stop it. I was making plans … wild plans …”

“Paul,” I said, “if only it could be …”

“Perhaps … something.”

“What?” I cried. “What can ever happen?”

“I won’t go on like this. This has made me realize that I shall not.”

“I can see no way out … except what you have suggested before. It might give us temporary satisfaction, but it’s not what we really want … not what you want or I want …”

“That’s true. But we could snatch what happiness we could and who knows … one day …”

“One day,” I said. “One day … I should never have stayed here. It would have been better if I had gone. I believe I might have, if Cousin Mary hadn’t had her accident. I was thinking of it …”

“Running away never helped.”

“This is one case where it might. If I had gone you would have forgotten me in time.”

“I never should. I should have lived my life in shadow. At least now you’re here. I can see you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Those are the good days when I see you.”

“Oh … Caroline!”

“It’s true. I don’t want to hide anything any more. One cannot go on pretending. We were doomed from the beginning. We are the star-crossed lovers. Cousin Mary used to say that there should have been a Romeo and Juliet in our families, but with a happy ending so that Landower and Tressidor could flourish side by side. But you see our story hasn’t a happy ending either.”

“At least we are here and we are neither of us people to accept defeat.”

“There is no way out of this. You could not leave Landower. And Gwennie has a stake in it. She bought it. She will keep what she has. There isn’t a way.”

“I shall find a way,” he said.

And I remembered later. I kept on remembering how he had looked when he said that—and I could not forget, however much I tried.

Summer was hot and sultry. Livia was now a lively two-year-old. She was a great comfort to me; she helped me through my days, which were so full that there was little time for dreaming.

I had bought a pony for her—a tiny creature—and I let her ride round the paddock on a leading rein. This was what she loved more than anything else. I had bought the pony soon after Jeremy left, hoping to divert her attention from him. I was greatly relieved when she did not appear to miss him.

Sometimes I would lead her out and take her down the drive a little way—sometimes as far as the lodge and Jamie would come out to applaud.

He was very fond of Livia and she had taken a fancy to him. He would invite us into the cottage and Livia would be given a glass of milk and pieces of bread cut into diamond shapes covered in honey which he told her was made especially for her by his bees.

One day when we called Gwennie arrived. She had come to buy some honey. She was invited in and offered a glass of mead—Jamie’s own very special brand.

She asked how he made it but he would not tell her. It was his own secret, he said.

“It’s delicious,” I said, “and surprisingly intoxicating.”

Gwennie smacked her lips and said she would buy some. “It’s really an old English drink,” she added. “I like to keep to the medieval customs. Did you learn to make honey in Scotland? And did you have special bees there, Mr. McGill?”

“Bees know no borders, Mrs. Landower. They’re the same the world over. It wouldn’t matter to them whether they were in England, Scotland or Australia. They are bees and bees are bees the whole world over.”

“But I asked you if you learned about them in Scotland. You do come from Scotland, don’t you?”

“Oh aye.”

“You must find it very different down here?”

“Oh aye.”

“I suppose sometimes you’re a bit homesick?”

“No.”

“That’s funny. People usually are. Sometimes I think of Yorkshire. How long is it since you left Scotland, Mr. McGill?”

“A long time.”

“I was wondering how long.”

“Time passes. You lose count.”

“But surely you remember …”

I saw that Jamie was getting restive under this cross-examination and I put in: “One week is so like another. I must say I am just amazed how quickly time passes. Livia, darling, have you finished your milk?”

Livia nodded.

“I’ve never been to Scotland,” said Gwennie, who did not seem to understand what I had very early in my acquaintance with Jamie, and that was that he did not like direct questions. I had always respected the fact that he did not wish to talk about himself. Gwennie, of course, was oblivious to his reticence—or if she was not, decided to ignore it.

“What part did you come from, Mr. McGill?”

“Oh, just above the Border. I must go and see to the bees. They’re angry about something.”

“Well, mind they don’t turn on you,” said Gwennie with a little laugh.

“They won’t,” I said. “They always respect Jamie. Well, we had better be going. Thank Jamie for the honey diamonds and the milk, Livia.”

Livia said Thank you and I wiped the honey from her fingers. “Well, now we’re ready,” I said.

We all came out of the lodge together.

“I’ll walk with you up the drive a little way,” said Gwennie. “I can take the short cut across five acre field.”

I sat Livia on her pony and walked along beside her. Gwennie was on the other side of me.

“He’s a queer customer,” she said. “Something funny about him.”

“You mean Jamie. He’s rather unusual.”

“Doesn’t give much away, does he?”

“He’s very generous with his milk and honey and mead, I thought.”

“I don’t mean that. He doesn’t tell you anything.”

“Well, you can’t be surprised that he doesn’t want to tell you how he makes his mead.”