Redemption Of The Rake

‘Not all of us are as soft-hearted as you, James,’ Bowood said.

This was no time to feel as if a cold hand had been laid on the back of his neck, James told himself, even as he wondered how ruthless Harry Bowood would be if need arose. The happy shouts of children and the joyous song of a robin in a nearby tree faded away and he frowned at the terrible memory of his last botched mission to Paris. Even now he didn’t know why he had had such a strong feeling he must go there and find out for himself what was wrong. The awful sight of his one-time lover’s twisted and mangled body, cast into the darkest alley at the dark heart of the old city when her interrogators went too far extracting her secrets, made him shudder in the mellow sunlight of an English Sunday. Lucky Hebe’s child was not yet three years old and would probably forget her lovely, reckless mother in time.

‘That’s not softness, but guilt,’ he confessed bleakly.

‘You take responsibility for the orphans of your smoky trade and call it guilt?’ Bowood said rather less cautiously than usual. James’s turn to eye him sceptically and hope it would remind him to be quieter.

‘Why not? The good reverend would say I deserve to feel it after all I have done and not done in the cause of who knows what these last few years.’

‘Society is so wrong about you, James Winterley. You have the heart and soul of a monk, not an idle man of fashion.’

‘Do I now?’ James said, brooding over how a monk would feel about such locked-down mysteries as Mr Finch’s eldest daughter. Even less easy with the temptation to knock off her awful bonnet and run his hands through that heavy mass of gold hair until it curled down her back and softened her wary face than this particular idle man of fashion was, he suspected.

‘James, the horses have been standing too long,’ his brother called impatiently from the lychgate and James shrugged off all thoughts of shocking the Vicar of Raigne’s daughter to her buttoned-up core.

‘I could walk, if I really had to, Big Brother,’ he drawled as annoyingly as he could manage, because it hurt to feel the estrangement between them strong as ever on such a fine and family-intimate day.

‘No doubt you can, but the question is what you’d do if you ever got those spotless Hessians of yours mired with a speck of dust or, heaven forbid, a scratch?’

‘Oh, give them to my valet, of course. I couldn’t possibly wear them again after that,’ James replied with a weary sigh, as if the depleted contents of his wardrobe troubled him far more than his brother’s low opinion.

‘Idle fop,’ Lord Farenze said impatiently and, since that was exactly the reaction he’d been looking for, why did it hurt?

‘James is teasing you, Luke,’ Lady Chloe Winterley, Viscountess Farenze, told her husband of six months gently.

James wasn’t sure if he loved or deplored her keen wits and kindness most right now. With Bowood always on the alert at his side, he wasn’t sure he wanted his estrangement from his brother taken out and inspected. It was what got him into this murky business in the first place, after all, and Bowood was one of the few who knew the truth about that dark time in the Winterley brothers’ lives. How could he not when James had fled to his school friend’s home and spilt his terrible new secrets into Harry’s ears that awful summer when he was seventeen and Luke was married to a vixen? Thank heaven his brother had found such happiness in his second marriage, even if it took him ten years too long to admit he couldn’t live without her any longer. The damage Pamela did to the Winterley brothers made James shiver, as if the doxy’s ghost was sitting nearby glorying over the rift she drove between them as gleefully as she did the day she made it.

‘High time I let Finch and his lady gather up their brood in peace,’ Lord Laughraine intervened, ever the bluff host. James marvelled once more that he’d found this haven in the storm his life had become this summer, and his lordship and his heir actually seemed to mean it when they pressed him to stay on now summer was over and Sir Gideon Laughraine was a very happily married man once more.

Riding back to Raigne in Gideon’s shiny new carriage through lanes already showing hints of autumn in the rich red of hawthorn berries and glossy blackberries basking in the October sun, James acknowledged Bowood’s arrival had taken some of the shine off the quiet country life he’d embraced this summer by buying a tumbledown old wreck of a house up in the Raigne Hills and the neglected estate that went with it. Brackley Manor, made of the local honey-grey stone and so ancient nobody had much idea when it was built, called to something in him. He didn’t want to call his instinctive attachment to a house the romantic whim Harry dismissed it as when he found out why James had lingered in this peaceful corner of England for so long. Yet Harry was probably right. The neglect of half a century made him long to see it come alive again under his care and it felt right to build something instead of plotting to destroy it, to restore instead of ruin a home, even if he wasn’t worthy of a happy retirement on his acres with a plump and contented little wife and a brood of children to make the old house a real home again.

Harry was part of another world, one where James no longer had a place. He was an unmasked spy; the most useless commodity a government could rid itself of as rapidly as possible. It was good of Harry to acknowledge him as a personal friend after that, he decided, and wondered why he didn’t feel the same impulsive warmth and gratitude towards his old friend and the man’s clever, devious parent as he had as a hurt and confused seventeen-year-old.

Back then Luke’s words echoed so savagely in his mind anyone who extended so much as a finger of friendship towards him after learning of them could have won his affection and loyalty. Now he wasn’t quite so sure the offer of an exciting new life and a secret beyond most youthful idiot’s dreams was as wonderful as he’d thought at the time. A summer in France, observing the daily horrors and euphoria of a revolution in full swing and reporting back to Lord Grisbeigh, sent him up to Oxford with a feeling of knowing so much he shouldn’t that Luke’s revolted avoidance of his younger brother hadn’t hurt as much as it should. Over the next three years he’d spent each long vacation in different parts of Europe and told himself it didn’t matter that Darkmere Castle in all its stern and breathtaking glory was lost to him along with Luke’s affection. The summers in Italy and Austria and even one memorable adventure in Russia set him up nicely for his future career of deception and disillusionment, but what if he hadn’t run to Harry that day? What if he’d had the courage to stay at home and chip away at the wrong he’d done Luke and, in his hurt pride, the lesser wrong Luke did him by banishing him from his home?

All of it was useless speculation now, but he still felt less trusting and grateful towards his old friend than he probably ought to. Another area of darkness in his cynical mind he didn’t want to explore, so did that make him a coward? Time couldn’t rub out his last terrible argument with his brother, but it did make his betrayal seem worse. Did you bed my wife? That harsh-voiced and unanswerable question was as clear as if Luke had asked it seconds ago even after seventeen years. It shook James to realise half his lifetime had gone by since that day. All he had to offer in reply was a dumb silence that stretched into a coward’s admission and Luke turned away from him as if the sight of his half-brother made him ill. I have no brother, then, he said and it was as true today as it was then, despite Luke’s new wife’s efforts to bridge the gulf between the half-brothers that her predecessor made.

* * *

‘Devil take it, Chloe, why can’t I stay?’ Luke asked his wife a few days later once she’d tracked James to his host’s library where he had permission to spread out the architect’s ideas for restoring Brackley to its former glory and adding a few fanciful touches of his own James wasn’t sure he approved of.

‘Because it’s my duty to see each of Virginia’s legatees alone before he embarks on his task for the season. I’d like to have seen your face if I let your brother sit in when I gave you yours, Luke Winterley.’

‘You weren’t my wife then.’

‘No, and I never would have agreed to marry you if I thought you didn’t trust me.’

‘It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s him,’ Luke said sulkily and James had to bite back a smile at the sight of his elder brother’s thunderous frown even though he hadn’t felt much like smiling after seeing the weighty letter in Chloe’s slim hand.

‘Stay if you must, Luke,’ he invited with a shrug it took a bit too much effort to make careless and indifferent. ‘It can’t come as a surprise to any of us what Lady Chloe has to say to me. I am the only person left on the list Virginia laid down in her will of us fools required to dance to her tune a season at a time. At least there won’t be any need to endure another wedding for my sake, after such a surfeit of them so far this year.’

‘Why not?’ Lady Chloe said so innocently he eyed her sharply and turned his attention to Luke for reassurance he didn’t expect the impossible, as well.

‘Because I haven’t the least desire to be wed and can you imagine me embracing fatherhood as you three did in your own unlikely way?’ he asked him directly.

‘Hmm, at the beginning of this year I would have said nothing was less likely, since then I’ve learnt even the impossible can happen if you want it badly enough,’ Luke said with a hot glance at his wife that made James feel he ought to blush, if only he still knew how.

‘At least you can end it on a certainty, then—I shall not marry. Not even Virginia could bring about that wonder and whatever she wants me to do will not result in marriage. As I have settled in a part of the country where you can see as little of me as you choose, Brother, we can continue as we are and I’m delighted to leave you two to carry on the Winterley line.’

It was a challenge too far, James realised as Chloe blushed rosily and Luke looked like a thundercloud, then stamped out of the room after curtly requesting his wife to get her business with his confounded brother over as swiftly as possible, then instruct her maid to pack for their departure on the morrow, now her last task for Virginia was done.

‘Why do you always have to stir his temper like that, James?’ Chloe asked with a sad shake of the head that killed the glib reply on his tongue stone dead.

‘It’s easier than trying to drag up feelings as dead as a doornail between us, Chloe. Don’t start a campaign to restore brotherly love between us, for that’s a marvel even Virginia couldn’t achieve.’

‘I don’t think any sort of love dies as easily as you think, but Luke is too good at hiding his feelings and you’re not a lot better.’

‘Maybe not, but some things are best hidden, or ignored until they go away.’

‘We shall see,’ Chloe told him with a very direct stare to challenge his refusal to take her hope fraternal love might yet blossom between him and her husband seriously. ‘Lady Virginia worked three unexpected wonders this year, perhaps there’s one to come,’ she said, extending her hand so he had to take the letter he’d been avoiding like a coward, or let it drop to the floor.

‘And perhaps not,’ he replied and accepted it. ‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned.

‘Your great-aunt Virginia taught me too well for me not to, James,’ she replied softly, then left him to read his last letter from a woman he had loved as much as he had it in him to love anyone.

Feeling closed in now, James rolled up the architect’s plans and shut his notebook. He was too distracted to risk riding his favourite stallion into the hills in search of the peace and quiet he craved, so he strode out of the house by the long windows of Lord Laughraine’s library and into the gardens and the wide parkland beyond. Confound it, now his hand was trembling as he checked Virginia’s letter was safely in his pocket. He stood still to let nature cure his uneven breathing with clear autumn air. There; he was almost himself again.

The sounds of busy nature preparing for winter only seemed to emphasise the fact he shouldn’t have come to Raigne, nor found a place in his heart for this rolling and generous countryside and his poor old wreck in the hills. No point bewailing what was done and out here nobody could see him grieve for a woman who simply loved him nearly nine months after her death. He sensed Virginia was weary with the world even before that last brief illness took her from it, but losing her put cracks in the shell he’d grown round his heart half a lifetime ago and they seemed to have been widening ever since.

A whole season had gone by since he came here, sickened by Hebe’s death and looking for who knew what? Now he’d fallen for poor tumbledown old Brackley and become fond of Virginia’s latest victim, as well. He could imagine her impatient frown at that description. Lady Farenze’s Rogues didn’t work—Luke, Tom and Gideon were good men. Three good men and a rogue didn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Now, where was he? Ah, yes, that last season: summer. When Frederick Peters, lawyer, turned back into Sir Gideon Laughraine, heir to a peerage and a magnificent old house and estates. Except Gideon was really Virgil Winterley’s grandson and, come to think of it, James had loved Great-Uncle Virgil as well, so that was two more on the list he couldn’t help loving if he tried. Gideon’s lovely, resolute wife Calliope put another crack in the walls James had built against the world at seventeen and it felt dangerous to care about anyone, but there seemed little point going on pretending he didn’t for much longer.

He should leave Raigne before any one of these people who got under his skin while he wasn’t paying attention got hurt like poor Hebe. As soon as he’d read Virginia’s letter he’d go. He was a landowner in his own right now, even if his house and estate weren’t much to boast about right now. On the unkempt Brackley Estate, James Winterley, rake, adventurer and care-for-nobody would be safe from his family and they would be safe from him. Striding freely now, he reached the arboretum Raigne was famous for among plant collectors in the know. It didn’t matter if their leaves were native wonders or more at home in China or the Americas, the tired and dusty dark green of late summer was shading into the glorious last gasp of gold and amber and fire of autumn that James secretly loved. He planned a modest version of this splendour at Brackley, then decided a well-stocked orchard would be better.

With a sigh he sat on a neat bench for those who had time to rest after the gentle climb. He couldn’t take out Virginia’s final letter and face her loss all over again yet, so he gave himself five minutes to enjoy the view like a tourist. The lingering warmth and richness of an English autumn must have soaked into his thoughts, because he felt much calmer when the screech of a jay reminded him life went on. Out here it hardly mattered if he was coolly arrogant Mr Winterley or a raving lunatic. Mother Nature only required him to be still and not bother her.

Chapter Three

At last James took Virginia’s letter from his pocket and examined the outside as if it could take him back to the moment she had finished, folded it precisely and directed it in her familiar, flowing hand. He imagined her getting to the end of her self-imposed task of writing four letters to her ‘boys’ and leaving them to be read after her death—one given out for every season of the year after she died. Missing her never seemed to fade, however many months he had to get used to it.

Luke had been ordered to do what he’d always wanted and discover all Chloe’s secrets, then Virginia’s godson, Tom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, had to face his childhood demons next, before Gideon took on a summer of abiding love and startling revelations. Now it was his turn. It would be a workaday ending to a year of changed lives. The others were lured into doing what Virginia wanted by the promise of James being independent of his half-brother and wasn’t that the biggest irony of all? He smiled wryly at the thought of Virginia baiting her hook with a lie. She knew he could buy a house and estate like the tumbledown one he’d acquired without feeling a dent in his ill-gotten gains.

He wondered why she had done it and why he’d failed to mention his fortune. Even a brother who wasn’t supposed to care a snap of his fingers for anyone could see Luke had lived half a life since he wedded his first wife Pamela. The woman was ten years dead, but some of the damage could never be undone, James concluded bleakly. At least Virginia made the stubborn great idiot change his mind about love and marriage and his great-aunt’s mysterious housekeeper. Now Tom Banburgh and Gideon Laughraine were happy as well and Luke’s new wife had given him his letter with a look that said she knew he wanted to sob like a child at the sight of it. Heaven forbid Virginia expected some impossible love match from him because he’d hate her to be disappointed. Not that she was here to be anything. He tested the weight of several pages of closely written hot-pressed paper and still hesitated to break the familiar seal of two Vs interlocked that always made him smile at their effrontery.

For goodness’ sake, boy, why don’t you get on and open the dratted thing?

The voice popped into his head as if Virginia was pacing about this manmade glade waiting to have her say and as impatient with shilly-shallying as ever. James looked round as furtively as he’d done as a boy when his great-aunt caught him in mischief and she felt so acutely present he only just stopped himself peering round this glade to see where she was hiding herself.

Don’t be ridiculous, it didn’t take supernatural powers to read the mind of a grubby schoolboy then and you’re not so different now.

So much for the calming effects of nature and a serene autumn day; fighting a superstitious shiver, James fixed his gaze on the only part of her that could be real today and lifted the seal with a neat penknife she would have confiscated on sight in the old days. Anything was preferable to the madness of conjuring up the beloved, infuriating, marvel of a woman he missed so badly nine months on from her death.

Darling James

Now don’t sit there thinking, Who? Me? I love you and always have done. From the very first moment I laid eyes on you as a squalling brat I knew you were special when you decided to trump your mother’s cast-iron certainty you would follow her family and came out a Winterley instead. Now I love you for your own sake and you have to accept that, James. You are a good, loving and, yes, a lovable man, and it’s about time you realised it.

So why did I do all this? You know as well as I do there’s no need to provide you with the fortune you will receive the day Gideon carries out his task to dear Chloe’s satisfaction. I hope she and Luke are happy together by now and Gideon attained his heart’s desire, by the way? I set the other boys quests they were eager to carry out, deep down, except perhaps for my beloved Tom. I had to push him to going back to the place he least wants to go to for his own sake.

You know almost as well as he does how it feels to be damaged and manipulated by those who are supposed to care for you the most and yet do not. I trust you to watch out for Tom and see he is not going wilder than ever since I made him return to Dayspring Castle and face his demons.

James looked up from his letter with a broad grin at the idea of Tom doing anything wild without his rather fierce new love at his side. The new Marchioness of Mantaigne was sure to outrage the ton as carelessly as her husband, but she would love him until their dying day. James felt the lightness of knowing all three were deeply and abidingly happy with their chosen brides and realised Virginia was right, he had worried about them—at least the ones he knew about. Gideon was a new comrade-in-arms and for some reason his wife, Callie, felt almost like a sister. Who would have thought he’d feel fraternal towards such a spectacular beauty as Lady Laughraine, bastard daughter of Lord Laughraine’s son and true heiress of Raigne?

That odd idea brought him neatly back to people who didn’t know themselves. Callie still thought of herself as a superannuated schoolmarm, even now she was reconciled with her doting husband. He frowned at the idea he’d settled near his newest siblings of the heart to protect them from wolves who saw Callie’s vulnerability and tried to exploit it. No, he had fallen for broken-down and neglected Brackley Manor House at first sight and that was quite foolish enough to be going on with. Almost feeling the impatience of Virginia’s letter in his hand, he went on reading as if she was here to nag him into it.

As for Gideon, I think you would like him and his wife if you would let yourself.

James laughed and shook his head, she would have enjoyed the joke that he was perilously close to being both friend and kin to the pair of them after years of walking alone. Nobody could accuse Virginia of lacking humour at his expense.

I know you have the makings of a fine man in you, James, and I trust you to be the strength at the heart of the Winterley family in the years to come. You have a power for good in you that you refuse to trust. I want you to know yourself better than you do today, lest you become a lonely and frustrated man and the true glories of this life pass you by. The pity of it is your mother poured all her frustrated ambition into you as a boy and you were still too fine a human being to let her turn you into a fool and envy your brother his future title and possessions. I only wish she and your father were blessed with more children to dilute her folly.

Still, at least you and Luke managed to love each other as boys. When Luke married Pamela because of some maggot your father got in his head about getting the boy wed and begetting heirs since he knew he was dying himself, she was determined to destroy that love, because she knew he didn’t love her. She was incapable of feeling true love for another human being, although she craved it as a miser does gold. I know she did something terrible to you both, but I dare not probe the sore places she left you both. I love the two of you too much in life to risk it, so in death I can say your quest will take longest, which is why I left you until last.

You have to learn to love and trust a lover, my dearest. Be she mistress, wife, or friend, I want you to open your heart to love as you never have since the little witch Luke married cast some wicked spell over you both and froze you in your tracks at seventeen. That’s so heartbreakingly young to cut yourself off from the most dangerous and breathtakingly wonderful of human emotions, my love. I was blissfully happy with the love of my life and couldn’t wish I’d never met him, even when he died, and grief and fury seemed likely to send me mad for a while. Love is something to celebrate and treasure, never a burden to be avoided at all costs as you appear to think.

So, even if it takes you until your deathbed, darling James, your quest is to learn to love with all the strength and humour and power in that great heart of yours. Don’t shake your head; I know you do your best to keep it secret from the rest of the world, but you are a special person and I value you as such. Luke always wanted to love his brother and I felt so sorry for you both when it became clear the main purpose of your mother’s life was to prevent him doing so. What you choose to do about your frosty relations with your half-brother is up to you. If you think it right to hold aloof from your family, I ache for you all, but know you have good reason.

James looked up from his letter to stare unseeingly into the soft autumn afternoon. Oh, yes, he had very good reason to stay away from those he loved. It ached in his heart as if a tight band had been strapped round his chest at seventeen and would never be loosed this side of the grave. He shook his head and found himself a coward for refusing to explore it. Revisit that pain and anger and sense of worthlessness, when all that could be done was move on as best he could? No; this time Virginia was wrong. Hadn’t he said he’d be her only failure?