The Blood of Roses (24 page)

I
t became apparent, a short while later, that Deirdre had not obeyed Catherine’s orders to sequester herself with Aluinn MacKail’s letters. A second knock on the bedchamber door sent the lovers scrambling again, this time to admit three burly servants, one burdened under a heavy tray of cheese, meat, and freshly baked biscuits; the other two carrying large buckets full of steaming hot water. After filling the enamel tub—careful to avoid staring too closely at the bed or the disheveled state of the young mistress—the servants departed again. Catherine had not finished turning the key in the lock before Alex was out of the dressing room and attacking the tray of food. While he ate, she completed her own toilette, including a vigorous battle with a hairbrush. Then, leaving him soaking blissfully behind a cloud of steam, she ventured out of the room to satisfy her curiosity as to exactly how many desertions had occurred amongst the staff and family.

Sir Alfred’s coach had churned down the drive in a swirl of dust and gravel precisely at noon. Of the thirty-odd maids and manservants who normally accounted for the invisible workings of the manor house, only a handful remained at their posts. Among the valiant were Walter Brown, the skeletally thin vintner, whose nose and eyes were perpetually as red as the wines he so lovingly made and sampled twenty-four hours a day. He had insisted he would guard the buried casks and locked cellar door with his life, if necessary. Joining him in a toast to their personal bravery was John Simmonds, the head groom and a man not given to crediting humans with half the wits of the meanest plowhorse. The two men shuffled awkwardly to their feet when Catherine passed through the kitchens, but she quickly set them at ease by liberating a bottle of Burgundy to take back to her rooms with her.

All the lower apartments were deserted, her footsteps the only sound as they echoed hollowly on the wooden floors. Most of the valuable paintings and ornaments had either been removed or hidden for safekeeping at Sir Alfred’s insistence. The windows were locked and the curtains drawn, as if to suggest that by not looking out, one could prevent anyone from coming in.

The hallways and upper rooms were quiet, the house-guests having departed along with Sir Alfred. Thinking of one guest in particular, Catherine set the bottle of wine on a credenza and delayed returning to her own chambers in favor of paying a brief visit to Lady Caroline. Her knock was answered by one of two harried maids, both of whom were in the midst of sorting and packing Lady Ashbrooke’s belongings into several enormous leather trunks.

Seeing her daughter standing in the doorway and noting the puzzled look on Catherine’s face, Lady Caroline dismissed the maids with a curt wave of her hand. When they were gone, she indicated a seat for Catherine on the brocade divan, although she elected to remain standing by one of the full-length windows.

“Your father told me you had refused to leave,” she began, her hands nervously toying with a lace handkerchief. “Perhaps you should have reconsidered.”

Catherine glanced around at the silk and satin chaos. “You seem to have.”

Lady Caroline met the cool sarcasm with a faint smile.

“I did not tell Alfred I was refusing to leave Rosewood Hall, only that I was refusing to leave with him.”

“I see. And Captain Lovat-Spence?”

“John has ridden to Spence House to fetch a carriage. It seems Alfred needed all of ours to carry away his personal treasures.”

“Then you will be leaving with the captain?”

“Yes. I’m leaving Rosewood Hall. I am also leaving your father, Catherine. For good this time.”

Catherine could not help staring. Indulging in less than discreet affairs was one thing; leaving her husband and family, running off with a man ten years her junior would be the utter ruin of Caroline Penrith Ashbrooke.

“I presume you have given this careful thought,” Catherine said slowly, a comment that caused her mother’s brow to arch delicately.

“I have given it twenty-five years of careful thought. It has only just recently occurred to me that I do not have another twenty-five years to squander in a futile search for something I shall never have again.”

Catherine looked up and Lady Caroline turned her face into the soft light from the window. She was still a very beautiful woman. Her skin was firm and unlined, her figure as lithe and trim as a young girl’s. Only the eyes betrayed the years of indifference and forced laughter, the boredom and loneliness, the sadness that went far deeper than anything Catherine could comprehend.

Outwardly, I will look much the same in twenty years, Catherine thought, not unhappily. Except that I will not have lived my life imprisoned in a loveless marriage. I will not have been driven to look elsewhere for affection, and I will not, ever, push my children away from me and give them into the cold hands of servants and nannies to raise. I will teach them about love and happiness by example, and they will never have cause to wonder if they were wanted, or if they were simply unpleasant consequences of marital obligations.

Startled, Catherine became aware of her mother’s soft violet-gray eyes contemplating the changing expressions on her face. The smile, when it touched those oh-so-unyielding lips, was even sadder than the one in her eyes.

“We have not been very good friends over the years, have we, Catherine?” Lady Caroline asked quietly—a question that raised an embarrassed flush in her daughter’s cheeks. The piece of lace suffered another series of agonized twists and turns before Lady Caroline found the strength to continue. “No. I did not think you would deny it. You may not believe this, Catherine, but I never meant it to be this way. You were my daughter, my own flesh and blood, and I wanted to love you. I wanted to. With all my heart.”

Then why didn’t you? Catherine wanted to ask. I was lonely too. Lonelier than you could ever imagine. Confused. Frightened. Sick at heart because I knew you did not want me but I did not know what I had done wrong to make you hate me so! You mourn the lack of friendship? I mourn the lack of something as simple as the touch of a hand against mine.

“I am not asking for your forgiveness, Catherine. I know it is far too late for that. But not, perhaps, for a little understanding?”

“There is nothing to understand. You obviously are not happy here and never have been.”

“No. But as much through my own fault as anyone else’s. I made some mistakes—bad mistakes—and thought, if I paid a hefty enough price in guilt and misery, it would all balance out in the end. I was wrong. The lies just get bigger, the deceit more complicated and painful, the contempt almost harder to bear than the guilt of the original sin.”

Reluctantly Catherine met her mother’s eye. Twenty-five years of confessions were wanting absolution, begging for a sympathetic ear, but did Catherine really want to hear them? Her new life was waiting down the hallway for her. Did she want shades of the old life intruding on her happiness?

Lady Caroline interpreted Catherine’s silence as assent. “Please, do not misunderstand me. It is not that Alfred has been cruel or unkind to me over the years. In the beginning, I was very grateful to him for marrying me … for giving my son a name and permitting me to retain a respectable position in society. I suppose one of the reasons I have stayed with him this long is gratitude.” She paused and gazed out the window again, and there were two soft splashes of color on her pale cheeks. “He seemed content enough that the child was male and the Ashbrooke name would survive through another generation despite his … inadequacy. You see, even though he was able to prove his manhood in half the brothels of London, a disease suffered in his infancy had left Alfred incapable of siring children of his own. It was very important to him not to be the last to bear his family name—important enough that he willingly accepted another man’s child as his own.”

Catherine felt her face drain of all warmth. Sir Alfred was incapable of fathering children …
any
children.

“Damien’s real father never knew about my condition. By the time I had worked up the courage to tell him, he had left London, left the country, and by the time his letter of apology reached me, explaining the need for his sudden departure … it was too late. My mother had already arranged for my marriage to Sir Alfred. I was here, at Rosewood Hall, and I was Lady Caroline Ashbrooke. The terror of being alone and ostracized was still too fresh in my mind and … and I just wasn’t strong enough to tell him about me or about his child. Your grandmother Penrith replied to his letters, informing him I was married and living in the country, and wanted nothing more to do with the wastrel and scoundrel he had become.”

Lady Caroline’s face tilted upward, her gaze focused softly on a cloud drifting out across the open fields.

“It was five years before I saw him again, purely by accident.” She stopped and smiled suddenly, wistfully. “He’d halted our coach to rob it.”

“Rob it!” Catherine gasped. “He was a …” She couldn’t say it. Could hardly dare to acknowledge it.

“He was wild and handsome,” Lady Caroline said. “Free as the wind and possessing the same inability to remain content in one place for any length of time. Being with him was like being blown off the peak of a mountain and not knowing if you were ever going to land, or if you did, whether you would land in one piece. He frightened me with his talk of freedom and his reckless, careless approach to responsibility. How could I possibly have fit into his life? How could he have guaranteed his children a home and a safe future when he could not even assure his own?”

Plural, Catherine thought. “Children?” she asked in a whisper.

“It was wrong of me to do so, I know, but I agreed to meet with him. I … couldn’t
not
agree,” she added helplessly, and the pain in her voice caused the ice around Catherine’s heart to melt in a rush. Two lovers reuniting after so many years apart: Her own experience still achingly fresh, Catherine could no more condemn her mother’s actions than she could her own.

“He wanted me to leave England with him,” Lady Caroline whispered. “Run with me, he said. Be free with me. Our love will keep us safe and warm and happy. But I did not think … I still could not tell him about his son … and I
had
to think about Damien, about the effect on his life, our life …
my
life. I was Lady Caroline Ashbrooke, and I had barely managed to survive one hurricane intact; I did not think I could suffer through the uncertainty of another. The fear turned to anger—anger that he had managed to keep his easy, reckless grasp on life while I … I had born the shame and the guilt and the loss alone. In my anger and bitterness I rejected him again. I sent him away. And … months later, when I bore him a second child, I transferred my anger and my resentment to her.”

Catherine stared at her mother. The shock was keeping her outwardly frozen to her seat on the divan, but inwardly her heart felt as if it might burst from her chest.

“Alfred, naturally, was outraged. He threatened to expose the whole sordid affair, and only an equally contemptuous threat from me, regarding his impotence and the effect a scandal of this magnitude would have on his political aspirations, kept him silent. How long the years seem when they are endured in silence! How endless the days and cold the nights, especially when your body aches and burns with the memory of past passion! Alfred had his politics and his brothels to keep him satisfied; I had an empty house, a son who grew more and more into the image of his father, and a daughter in whom I could not bear to see the same fierce spirit as possessed by the love I had thrown away. I took lovers into my bed, one after another, hoping to dull the pain and dim the memories. The loneliness always came back, however, each time I looked into your eyes and saw in them the woman I might have been.”

Her laugh was as raw as the sound of tearing lace. “Imagine my relief when I thought I had finally managed to see you safely wed and out of this house. And imagine the agony of seeing you come back, looking the way a woman can look only when she has found true and utter bliss within herself. You were glowing with the wonder of newfound love, Catherine. It was radiating from you then as it still is now, as if you had just come from your lover’s bed an hour ago.”

Catherine stood and took two halting steps toward her mother, but before she could speak, or even reach out in a gesture of empathy, Lady Caroline had regained her composure and hardened herself against any pity that might be forthcoming.

“As soon as Captain Spence returns with the carriage, I … we will be leaving this place. Arranging his affairs will take several weeks, during which time I shall be a guest at Spence House. He informs me he has land in the colonies—in New England—and seems quite convinced we can be very happy there.”

Catherine swallowed past the lump in her throat. “What do you think?”

“I think … I think if I do not go this time, I may never have the chance again.”

“Do you love him?”

Lady Caroline frowned and dashed at the tears that still streaked her cheeks. “He makes me laugh. He makes me feel … wanted.”

“But … do you love him?” Catherine asked again, softly.

The shining violet-gray eyes turned slowly to hers. “I will only ever love one man, Catherine. Only one.”

“Then why not go to him, or at least try to find him?”

Lady Caroline smiled ruefully. “The life expectancy of a highwayman is not exactly encouraging. I do not even know if he is still alive. The last I heard of Jacques St. Cloud, he had returned permanently to France, but even if I knew where to look, or under which name to begin to search for him, catching up to him would be—as the authorities have discovered these many long years—like trying to catch the wind. No, my memories will have to suffice. And who knows—perhaps Captain Spence and I will be able to make some new ones.”

“Will I see you again before you sail for the colonies?”

Lady Caroline seemed briefly taken aback. “You would want to see me again? After all I have told you?”

“All you have told me, Mother, is that you are human and very much in need of a friend. I should like to be that friend, if you will let me.”