Chapter Fourteen
Jacob removed the letter from Margaret’s hand and quickly read the contents, not sure if he wanted to hear his mother’s cruel words, but determined to face the cold facts, no matter how unpalatable.
My dearest Charlotte, it is always a joy to receive your letters and to hear of little Jacob’s latest exploits.
Walking already! I think you might be right that he is the cleverest of children, although mothers always think their child is brighter, sweeter and more beautiful than any other child.
Although, as you insist on telling me, yes, in Jacob’s case, I’m sure this is correct…
Frowning, he flicked to the signature and discovered that it was from his mother’s mother, a woman he had never met.
He continued reading the letter, which then went on to discuss local gossip about people he had never heard of, and ended with the mother counselling the daughter on how she should be the one to temper her husband’s bad moods and reminding her that it was the wife’s duty to create a harmonious home so that her husband did not feel the need to constantly correct her and point out her faults.
Jacob winced inwardly, knowing that nothing anyone could ever do would have stopped that curmudgeon from finding fault with everything and everyone.
He picked up another letter and quickly read the contents to see if that one letter was an aberration.
It wasn’t. The next one, and the one after that, and the one after that, were all of the same nature.
They began with the grandmother gushing over something supposedly remarkable he had done, such as learning to say a few words, or hugging the gamekeeper’s dog, or trying to help the maid as she cleaned the steps, then went on to recount the local goings-on, and ended with further advice on how to turn a tyrant into a loving husband.
He placed the letter back in the box, picked up the locket and opened it.
Had he been wrong about his mother all along?
Those letters had not been sent to a cold, unloving mother, but one who had adored her child—a woman who’d had to live under the same tyranny which had made his childhood so miserable.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, looking towards the portrait that had been dumped in this dusty room when she had died at a young age.
Jacob wasn’t sure what he was sorry about—for believing the lies his father had told him, which were obviously designed to hurt him, or for all that she had endured at the hands of his father, or for not cherishing her memory all these years but continuing to disparage an innocent woman.
He went over to the portrait of his mother and picked it up. He looked down at her gentle face, at that tentative smile, and once again whispered how sorry he was.
‘Right, let’s hang this where it belongs,’ he said, heading out of the attic door, the portrait tucked under his arm.
They retraced their steps down the narrow attic stairway, onto the slightly wider stairway that led past the servants’ rooms, then down the grand staircase that took them to the entranceway.
The efficient footman had removed the stepladder, so he stopped a passing servant and asked him to bring a ladder and a duster.
A quick, bemused frown flicked across the man’s face before he bowed and rushed off.
The servant was right to look surprised.
It was unusual for a duke to wield a duster, but his father had dumped this portrait in the attic and left it to gather dust. It was only right that her son would be the one to clean it and place it where it belonged.
The man returned, carrying the stepladder, followed by a maid with a duster. The footman placed the ladder in front of the empty spot where his father’s portrait had been, and the maid moved towards the painting, cloth at the ready.
‘Thank you,’ he said, holding out his hand.
The maid looked towards the footman, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, then she placed the duster in his outstretched hand.
‘Right, off you go. I can manage.’
Still looking at him as if he might have gone mad, the maid bobbed a quick curtsey and the two retreated. Jacob set to work, removing the build-up of dust on the gilt frame and gently stroking the cloth across the portrait to ensure none remained on her lovely, kind face.
‘So you dust as well as lighting fires,’ Margaret said, an amused lilt in her voice.
‘I am a man of many talents,’ he said, stepping back to examine the portrait to assure himself it was spic and span. Then he climbed up the steps and hung it where it belonged.
Once he’d climbed down, he stood beside Margaret and they both looked into the eyes of a woman he wished he’d known.
‘She’s transformed this entranceway,’ Margaret said. ‘Instead of being confronted by a scowling man who appeared to be saying you weren’t welcome in his house, you’ll be greeted by a woman with a kind and gentle expression.’
Jacob nodded. She was right. Hopefully, generations to come would see his mother looking down at them and feel her love.
His eyes slammed shut. Where on earth had that thought come from?
There would be no generations to come, or if there were, they would be from a distant branch of the family, not his progeny. He looked over at Margaret, who was still gazing up at his mother, and sadness descended upon him once more.
This marriage really was a travesty. She too would make a wonderful, loving mother but this forced marriage to him had deprived her of that chance.
She was trapped in a situation she did not want, just as his mother had been.
He looked back up at that kind face and wondered what advice she would give him in this situation.
As expected, his mother said nothing, just continued to gaze down at him with that tender expression, leaving him to speculate what she would have thought if she’d known what kind of man her son had grown into.
Jacob was certain she would not have been impressed.
He’d spent his entire adult life taking pleasure in horrifying his father with his dissolute ways.
If his mother had lived, would he have become a different man?
Would he have tried to make this woman proud of him?
As pleased as he was to find those letters, or rather, that Margaret had found those letters, he now felt completely off-kilter, no longer knowing what to think and not entirely sure of who he was any more.
Margaret had expected Jacob to be buoyant after discovering that his mother was not as he had believed, but he was strangely subdued.
Was it because he was thinking of all he had missed out on? Was he wondering how different his life would have been if she had lived? He would not have been that sad, traumatised child who had to flee to the hermit’s cottage. He would have had one parent who loved him.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He turned towards her, his expression sorrowful. ‘I let her down,’ he said quietly.
Margaret shook her head slightly as he turned to look back up at the mother he had never known.
‘I can’t imagine what she would think of the man her son has grown into.’
‘I’m sure she would be pleased her son became such a good, kind, thoughtful man.’
He looked at her sideways. ‘We’re talking about me, remember? The man whose antics regularly appear in the gutter press.’
‘I’m not saying you’re not without your faults,’ she said with a smile to soften her words.
‘That’s somewhat of an understatement.’
‘But, well, everything that has happened since we met would not have happened if you weren’t good, kind and thoughtful.’
His brow furrowed and he shook his head in disbelief as if she were talking gibberish.
Margaret had now found herself in the bizarre position of defending behaviour that not long ago she would have seen as indefensible, but she hated to see him looking so downcast when he should be celebrating.
‘You wanted to save your…’ she paused ‘…your mistress from the disgrace of a divorce based on infidelity.’
‘Ex-mistress.’
‘Well, yes, but in doing so you were acting in an admirable manner. One could almost say you were being gallant.’
His eyebrows drew close and his expression suggested he thought she was losing her mind, and she had to admit she was pushing the definition of gallant somewhat.
‘Then you married me because we were…’ again, she paused ‘…caught in a compromising position. You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I did. Your father threatened to ruin me.’
It was her turn to send him a look as if he were talking nonsense. ‘You’re a duke. You could have got out of this, despite Father’s threats.’
‘But putting you in a position where we had to marry was not the behaviour of a good, kind or generous man.’ He sent her a defiant look, as if challenging her to deny it.
‘If I remember correctly, you did not put me in this position. I put myself in this position.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, looking back up at his mother. ‘But you are now in the same position as my mother, stuck with a man you don’t want to be married to.’
‘Jacob, you are nothing like your father,’ she said, lightly placing her hand on his arm.
‘God, I hope not,’ he said quietly.
Margaret drew in a long, slow breath before she continued.
‘A man like your father would never tell his bride that she was…’ she drew in another strength-giving breath ‘…was under no obligation to do her wifely duty. I’m sure a man like your father would not have tried to reassure his wife that they could just be good friends.
I doubt a man such as he would do all he could to make the best of this situation and encourage his wife to do the same. ’
‘Hmm,’ was all he replied as he continued gazing up at his mother’s portrait.
‘I know she would be proud of you, Jacob. I know she would have loved the man you grew into.’
Just as I do, she could add, that realisation breaking over her like a wave that had breached the cracks in her defences, washing away the last of her determined resistance to the truth.
She closed her eyes and breathed in and out, slowly and deeply, as she collected herself, then opened her eyes and turned to face him. He was gazing at her, and she was sure tears were glinting in his blue eyes. She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
‘I believe it is you who are kind, generous and thoughtful,’ he said, returning that gentle squeeze. He looked back up at the portrait. ‘Another thing I have in common with my father is we both married women who were far better than we deserved.’
‘Well, I’m not going to argue with you over that,’ she said, adopting a teasing tone to mask the magnitude of what she was feeling.
‘What? No argument?’ he said in a similarly light vein. ‘But it is what we do so well.’
‘Oh, all right, you’re wrong. You got exactly the woman you deserved.’
He laughed, as she’d hoped he would. Looked up at the portrait, then back at her.
‘Right, now that we’ve transformed this entranceway and made it welcoming rather than gloomy and oppressive, there is another room I promised you we would transform.’
She angled her head in question.
‘You need to find your perfect studio.’
She clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, yes, let’s do that.’
To that end, they took a tour of the house, looking into countless drawing rooms, music rooms, libraries, studies, a billiard room and a ballroom.
The list seemed to go on and on, not to mention countless bedrooms on the second floor, and that didn’t include the servants’ quarters and their bedrooms.
Finally, she settled on a morning room that looked as if it had not been occupied for many years.
Facing north, it had perfect light and not just in the morning.
Once the heavy velvet curtains had been removed from the floor-to-ceiling sash windows, it would have good natural light throughout the day.
It looked out over the gardens and the hills in the far distance, and Margaret was sure the ever-changing outlook throughout the seasons would be a constant source of inspiration.
‘This is ideal,’ she said to Jacob, who had shown no sign of tiring as she had led him from room to room, assessing each one as she went.
‘The curtains will have to be taken down and those carpets rolled up and I don’t need any of this furniture,’ she said, looking around at the settees, chairs and side tables. ‘I wouldn’t want to get paint on them.’
‘Excellent,’ he said.
She looked around the room, her mind full of possibilities. ‘Thank you, Jacob. This is wonderful.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said with a comic bow and a sweep of his hand. ‘I just want you to always feel that you belong here, which is more than I ever felt as a child. Although, with you in it, I must admit this house is becoming a lot less like a dungeon and more like a home.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s a compliment,’ she said with a laugh.
‘But thank you. And I was right, wasn’t I?
You can be kind, generous and thoughtful.
’ She was tempted to give him a hug, to express just how grateful she was, then thought Why not?
She reached up and kissed the cheek of the man she now knew she was in love with.
‘If you keep doing that, my resolve for us to remain just good friends will be sorely tested.’ The words held humour but his voice was soft, suggesting he too was reacting to the intimacy of her touch.
She looked up into his eyes, her heart hammering in her chest, her arms still holding his shoulders.
‘Then let’s test that resolve, shall we?’ Her words were little more than a whisper.
‘Test it?’
Heat tinged Margaret’s cheeks. She was hoping he would not ask that question, would not expect her to spell it out, but she had come this far; she would not retreat now. ‘You said you wouldn’t expect me to do what you rather quaintly referred to as my wifely duty.’
Surely now he knew what she was saying, but he said nothing in response.
‘Well, I want to. We can still remain friends, but…well, friends who are sometimes…well, a bit more than just friends.’
‘Margaret, my God, I do want you in my bed, so very, very much, but I would never want you to think you have to do anything you don’t want to.
I don’t want you to feel that you owe me.
’ He cast his hand towards the room as if suggesting she was offering herself to him in payment for providing her with a studio.
‘It’s not that. Whether we wanted it or not, we are now man and wife. I will not be marrying any other man, and well, I want to know what intimacy between a man and a woman is like.’
‘You want me to satisfy your curiosity?’
Margaret knew that curiosity was among the many things she wanted satisfied, even if it was not the most pressing one, so she nodded. ‘Yes, Jacob, I am asking you to show me what it is like when a man makes love to a woman.’
He said not another word but took her by the hand and quickly led her up the stairs towards his bedchamber.