CHAPTER THIRTY
Somehow it seemed appropriate that today of all days Gage should finally decide to visit his mother’s grave. Even though I knew it had been his grandfather’s worsening illness and whatever words he’d imparted to him this morning that drove him here, and not the fact it was his birthday. But whatever the rightness, my breath constricted and my heart clenched at the sight of him kneeling before the ornate grave marker topped with a cross.
Upon leaving the dowager in the chapel, I’d returned to our bedchamber, thinking to find Gage there. However, Anderley told me Gage had changed into his riding boots, though he’d not said where he intended to go. Given the distressing events of the morning, as well as the fact that he wouldn’t need his riding boots to visit the woodworking shed, I had a fairly good idea where I would find him.
The leaden skies of early morning had lightened somewhat, but not enough to make the heavily shadowed churchyard appear any cheerier. And not enough to clearly illuminate Gage’s expression, though I imagined it well enough from his slumped posture and bowed head. The air was ripe with the scents of moss and damp earth, and thick with the lingering sense of time lost. I waited a dozen feet away under the heavy branches of a yew tree, worrying the train of my charcoal gray riding habit between my fingers. My eyes stung as I struggled to suppress my answering emotions. It didn’t matter that my own mother was buried hundreds of miles away. She was still with me, at least in my memories.
When finally Gage lifted his head, I decided this meant he was ready for me to approach, though he never looked at me. Stepping up next to him, I turned to face his mother’s grave and the stark letters of her name carved in granite. He clutched his hat between both of his hands, spinning the brim round and round between his fingers.
There were no flowers planted before her grave, but then there were few in the entire graveyard. The overshadowing trees didn’t allow enough sunlight through their branches for them to grow. However, the grave had evidently been carefully maintained, and I supposed he had Lord Tavistock to thank for that.
“When Mother died,” he began softly, “I was so furious. Furious with Father. Furious with them all.” He heaved a sigh. “But later, I realized I was mostly furious with myself.”
“Oh, Gage,” I murmured, my heart breaking to hear the pain, the self-recrimination in his voice. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t do more to protect her, to shield her. And this was before I ever knew she’d been poisoned.”
“But darling, you were so young. Just eighteen upon her death. You take too much on yourself.”
“I know that now,” he admitted. “But at the time, I was just so angry, so overwhelmed by it all. All I could do was lash out.”
“You were grieving, with no one to help you through it. Your father was away at sea—not that he would have been very consoling had he been there. But at least you wouldn’t have been on your own.” I studied his face, and reflected on all the things that had been mentioned in passing during the last few weeks, all the things I hadn’t understood. “Is that what happened at her funeral? You lashed out?”
He nodded. “I . . . I didn’t behave in a very becoming manner.”
“Well, I imagine not. It was your mother’s funeral, after all.” I found it difficult to imagine the amount of composure such a thing would take. Having been only eight years old, I’d been deemed too young to attend my mother’s funeral, as had my ten-year-old brother. But we’d snuck away from our governess to visit her grave just a few days later and stood immobile before it for hours, unable to fully contemplate or accept our loss. If our father hadn’t found us and taken us away, I’m not sure we would’ve ever torn ourselves from the spot.
“Yes, but . . .” He faltered as if he didn’t know how to put his recollections into words or if he even wanted to.
“Tell me,” I coaxed him, hoping this time he would trust me.
He closed his eyes and exhaled a ragged breath. “The entire event was one long torment. I was already struggling to maintain my composure. I’d traveled by coach for days from Cambridge in order to escort my mother’s casket. I’d barely slept since her death.”
His face tightened in remembered pain, and I couldn’t help but wonder why his cousins, who would’ve also been up at university, had not ridden with him. What a lonely final vigil.
“And then . . . I heard Alfred and Rory whispering with one another, jesting about how perhaps she should’ve been buried in a plot in a Royal Navy graveyard. And then . . . and then they made some rather crude insinuations.”
“That’s horrid!” I gasped. The insensitivity, the cruelty.
“I . . . I swung around in the middle of the rector speaking words over her grave and told them to shut their mouths.” He shifted his feet. “Though I used rather more vulgar language than that. Then Rory tried to justify his comments by saying they were only thinking of my father. How he was unlikely to be buried in the family plot next to his wife.”
“Oh my,” I replied, guessing how this stray comment would have ignited Gage’s smoldering temper already made raw from grief and lack of sleep.
He grimaced. “Yes. In the end, I had to be escorted from the graveyard before I pummeled my cousins before my mother’s open grave.”
“Oh, Sebastian.” I threaded my arm through his, pressing my body to his side to offer him what comfort I could. “No wonder you never wanted to come back.”
“I visited her grave alone the next morning and then left for good.”
“Until now.”
His expression was bleak. “Yes.”
We stood silently side by side, sharing our warmth as we gazed down at the cold grave. The only sound to break the hush of the churchyard was a small bird of some kind, tweeting from the upper branches of one of the trees.
“Tell me about her,” I murmured, feeling the weight of her memory pulling Gage into the grave with her. Perhaps if he shared them, perhaps if he released some of them into the sunlight, the load might be lighter. When he didn’t respond, I decided he might be at a loss for where to begin. “What were some of her favorite things? Her favorite food, for instance? Or color? What made her smile?”
“She . . . she loved strawberries,” he began tentatively, gaining strength and momentum as he talked. “With cream. She . . . she used to say she could eat them at every meal. Her favorite color was violet. And that was her favorite flower, too. Father never realized that. He always brought her grander bouquets. But she loved the shy violets that grew in the tiny garden behind our cottage the most.” His brow furrowed momentarily at his mention of the cottage, but then he pressed on. “She loved to receive the post. I think because it brought letters from Father and friends both far and near. But when days would go by without even a short note she would grow sad. So sometimes I would write her a letter and post it, just so she would have something to open. That always made her smile.” He paused. “Or when she was really sad, I would do this silly dance for her. She claimed I began doing it the moment I could walk.”
I smiled at the image of Gage dancing just to make his mother happy and at the pink cresting his cheeks at such an admission. Arching up onto my toes, I pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. There was a light dusting of stubble there from the hasty shaving he’d performed earlier that morning.
He glanced down at me in surprise. “What was that for?”
“Nothing. Everything. For reminding me how much I love you.”
His lips pressed together and his eyes grew suspiciously bright. Wrapping his arm around my waist, he pulled me to his side and tucked my head against his chest, jostling my bonnet. I heard the telltale sniff of someone fighting tears, but I didn’t speak. If he didn’t wish to be seen openly weeping in a graveyard, I couldn’t blame him. So I held him just as tightly and waited for his grip to loosen.
In the end, it was a light rain that staved off Gage’s brimming emotions and propelled us out of the graveyard. In our haste to leave the manor, neither of us had grabbed an umbrella. Not that they would have proved very useful on horseback anyway. Resigned to a little dampness, we paused for a moment beneath the covering of the lych-gate.
“If I may be so bold,” I said, “what did your grandfather wish to speak with you and Alfred about?”
Gage turned to stare at the horses tethered outside the gate. “He told Alfred to quit dodging his responsibilities and find the courage to decide what he really wanted.” He paused, furrowing his brow.
I leaned in to catch his eye. “And you?”
“He asked for my forgiveness.” He sounded uncertain and still slightly shocked. “He said he hadn’t made my mother live at Windy Cross Cottage, that it was her choice to reside there. And after he learned she’d died from being poisoned by her maid, he tore it down because he was ashamed not of her, but of himself. That if he’d made her live at the manor, perhaps she wouldn’t have been made ill so often in our drafty, damp cottage. That someone would have realized what her maid was doing.”
“It sounds like he blames himself for her death,” I murmured, just as surprised by his confession, though I’d suspected something of the sort.
He nodded numbly. “I think he does. He also apologized for not stepping in more often to halt my cousins’ teasing and Aunt Vanessa’s spiteful gossip. He said he thought it would make me stronger, that it would better prepare me for society’s slights and insults. Except they never came. Father proved to have even higher-ranking friends than himself, and I was accepted based on them and on my own merits. It never mattered that Father held no rank. And then he was given a barony, so the point was moot.”
All of this should have made Gage feel relieved, but instead he still seemed troubled. “I would have thought your grandfather’s apology would please you, or at least reassure you, but it doesn’t,” I prodded, hoping he would explain.
“No. It does. It’s only . . .” He reached out a hand to touch the rough wood of the arch holding up the lych-gate, running his gloved fingers over a set of initials carved there. “I believed hearing those words was what I wanted, more than anything. To prove my family wrong, for my sake, and for my mother’s. To show them I’m as worthy a descendent as any of them. Worthier, even. And yet . . .”
“It rings hollow?”
He nodded. “What does any of that matter? I know I’m worthy. You know it. Those I count closest to me do also. I’m glad Grandfather and I reconciled. But . . . now he’s dying. Why couldn’t it have happened sooner? Would he have confessed all of this if I’d come home sooner?”
“Darling, you can’t punish yourself like that.” I urged him to face me. “There’s no way to know whether coming home would have made any difference. It’s just as likely it could have made relations between you even worse.” I pressed a hand to his chest over his heart. “You know as well as I do that life doesn’t always turn out like one would wish. You have to embrace the good when it comes and let go of the bad. And your reconciling with your grandfather, no matter how late it came, is good.”
He inhaled a shaky breath. “You’re right.”
He might say he agreed with me, but it would be a long time before he truly believed it.
I tucked my arm through his again and pulled him toward where the horses were tethered. “The important thing now is that you should spend as much time with your grandfather as you still can. Let me worry about coordinating the continued search for Rory.”
“You’re not planning on searching the moors in this weather, are you?” he protested.
Our eyes lifted to the sky where the latest cloud bank had slid past, allowing a sliver of sunlight to pierce through before the next one smothered it again. Normally I wouldn’t have been overly concerned with such weather. Rain was more often than not a daily occurrence in Britain. But the wary manner in which Gage watched the skies, like they were a portent to something worse, gave me pause. Perhaps the fast-moving clouds were even more indicative of the capricious shifts to come.
“Not unless it clears. And not alone. If I do set out from the manor, I’ll be certain to take a few servants with me.”
“Speak to Hammett. He’ll know which men would be best.”
“Is that Anderley?” I asked in surprise, as our horses cantered into the courtyard upon our return to Langstone Manor.
The valet stood next to the stables, chatting with one of the groomsmen. But as soon as he caught sight of us, he swiftly moved forward. Gage’s expression turned stony, anticipating poor news about his grandfather. As we brought our horses’ heads around, he vaulted from his steed’s back.
“What news?”
“We’ve uncovered some information you should know straightaway. Miss McEvoy’s waiting for us in your chambers.”
I could see relief tremble through my husband as he exhaled. This was about the investigation, not his grandfather.
I scrambled to dismount, allowing Gage to assist me, and then led the men through the manor and up the stairs to our rooms. Bree stood inside my bedchamber next to the young maid who tended the fires. The same one who was infatuated with Anderley. Her skin flushed a fiery red the moment the valet entered the room behind Gage and me.
“Tell them what you told us,” he coaxed her. He smiled encouragingly when she seemed to falter. “Go ahead. I assure you, they don’t bite.” But the smirk he displayed next plainly said he might.
Bree rolled her eyes. “Give the lass some time. Yer flashin’ yer charms aboot ’ll only make her stammer more.”
The maid swallowed, glancing at each of us nervously. “I . . . I just finished sweepin’ out the hearth in Mr. Trevelyan’s room when I saw Lord Langstone hurry past. He looked like he was goin’ out, so I . . . I decided I’d best sweep his, too.” She worried her fingers. “I hadn’t done so in a while, with him bein’ missin’ and all.” Her eyes communicated she was worried she would get in trouble for this dereliction.
I nodded. “Go on.”
“But when I got to his room, I . . . I found this lyin’ on the ashes in his hearth.” She pulled pieces of paper from the pocket in her apron. “I normally would never ’ve taken ’em,” she hastened to say, flicking her eyes toward Anderley. “But . . . but Mr. Anderley told me I should tell him if I saw anything strange, and I thought this might be what he meant.”
“Indeed, it is,” Anderley confirmed.
I took the paper from her grasp as she beamed shyly at the valet, and turned to allow Gage to read over my shoulder. The paper had been torn in only four pieces, so I was easily able to fit it back together to tell that it was a letter. One hastily jotted off.
Alfred,
I know where your brother is. Meet me at my cottage as quickly as you may.
Lorna
I looked up at Gage, seeing the same dawning worry in his eyes. There was no indication whether Rory was alive or dead, but if he were dead, why would she have phrased it so? In that case, she would’ve come to the manor to share what she’d uncovered. Which meant Rory was likely alive.
“You don’t think Alfred would do anything hasty, do you?” I asked Gage.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But it would be best if we didn’t give him the chance to.” He turned to the maid. “How long ago did you see Lord Langstone leave?”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“She came to me about half an hour ago,” Anderley interjected. “Straight after finding the note?”
She nodded in confirmation.
“How long did that take?” he asked her.
She flushed again. “Not long.”
“So maybe three-quarters of an hour,” Anderley deduced.
Gage’s expression turned grim. “Too long.” He moved toward the window, staring out at the swirling cloud-strewn sky. “Gather as many men as can be spared,” he told Anderley. “Then have the groomsmen saddle horses.”
Anderley nodded and hastened out the door.
“I’m coming with you,” I said when Gage swiveled to face me. I wasn’t about to be left behind, not when Lorna was somehow mixed up in all of this.
He glowered at me for a moment, but did not protest. “Dress for rain and wind,” he replied as he strode toward the connecting door. “It’s not going to be a comfortable ride.”