CHAPTER ELEVEN #3
“You see, dearest,” explained Mrs Peverill, coming up to her daughter and putting an arm about her waist, “it seems that Mr Hawkeridge mentioned our presence here, and your uncle, believing that perhaps you might be related —”
“Stuff and nonsense!” broke in the old man. “No perhaps about it. Knew it at once, the instant the boy mentioned your name, ma’am.” He addressed himself to Verena. “Think I haven’t been aware all these years of your situation, girl?”
Verena released herself from her mother’s grasp and turned back to him. She could not control the rough hostility in her voice, for the speed and turn of events had ripped her erstwhile mastery to shreds.
“How should I know, sir? I have certainly been unaware of yours!”
“Don’t be pert with me, girl!”
Verena faced him, her figure as stiffly erect as his own. “By what right, sir, do you censure my conduct? You did not choose to own me these many years, yet you expect to assume all those rights of obedience you have abrogated.”
“Verena!” gasped her mother.
“I expect common courtesy, young lady, if nothing else,” snapped the old man, his eyes narrowed and glaring.
That pulled Verena up. She could not abate one jot of the pent-up emotion within her, but she bit down on another retort, and tried for a milder note, which only partially succeeded.
“Every stranger has a right to that, sir.”
Mrs Peverill seized her arm, uttering almost tearfully, “Verena, that is not at all a proper way to speak to your grandfather. Pray beg his pardon, do!”
There did not look to be very much expectation of Verena doing any such thing, Denzell decided. He waited, almost breathlessly, for the outcome. If he’d had any doubts about Verena’s identity, this encounter must have laid them all to rest. She was all too plainly old man Chaceley’s granddaughter.
He was glad he had insisted on accompanying Verena back to the lodgings, although it had not been entirely for her sake.
If the Chaceleys were indeed in Tunbridge Wells — assuming they were the Chaceleys he knew so well — there could be no doubt those casual words of his to Bevis had been instrumental in bringing them here.
The two protagonists were still glaring. Verena knew she was manifestly in the wrong. She ought to apologise. But the words refused to be uttered.
“Verena!” pleaded Mrs Peverill again.
But quite suddenly, the old man threw back his head and uttered a shout of laughter. “By God, you’re a plucky little piece! Here’s my hand, girl. I’m proud to call you granddaughter.”
Verena sighed out her resentment, and accepted the proffered hand, her stiffness melting away. She smiled.
“Indeed I do beg your pardon, sir.”
“Well, don’t spoil it, girl,” protested her grandfather. “Only female in the family who ever dared stand up to me.”
“It seems,” put in Bevis, his amusement plain to see, “that your granddaughter is practised in standing up to authority.”
“I have had to fend for myself, perhaps,” Verena said, wondering how much he knew. “But I should not have spoken so. Let my excuse be that I have endured a morning of dreadful anxiety.”
“Oh, my poor love,” exclaimed Mrs Peverill.
“I thought you had gone away with Nathaniel and Adam,” Verena uttered, with a resurgence of her earlier fears. “He has gone, you know.”
Mrs Peverill took her hands. “Yes, Betsey told me. My dearest, I knew he would, for I sent to him last night after we talked.”
Verena blinked. “You wrote to him?”
Her mother nodded. “I told him I would not come home, not for fear of what he might do, but because I could no longer bear to distress you with the thought of my going.”
Tears started to Verena’s eyes and her mother embraced her.
Denzell, watching the two visitors, thought Bevis Chaceley looked to be quite as affected as he was himself. But the old man looked on, apparently unmoved, yet with a look of interest as if he was still summing up his granddaughter.
“If only I had known,” Verena said huskily, when they separated again. “I went to the New Inn to find you.”
“I should have left you a message by Betsey. I am so sorry, dearest, but you see, when your grandfather’s note arrived, asking me to go and visit him at the Angel — that is where your grandfather is putting up, you must know — I was so shocked that I could not think straight.”
“You see, my dear,” explained Bevis, “if it transpired that you were my brother’s daughter, it seemed incumbent upon us to discover under what circumstances you had found yourselves obliged to come to Tunbridge Wells thus alone.”
Verena looked towards Denzell, frowning. “What did you tell them?”
“That you and your mother were living in lodgings together,” he answered. “Also that there was some mystery attached to your presence, and that you, my princess, were quite clearly in some fear and distress — upon what account, of course, I was unable to say.”
Mrs Peverill’s ears pricked up at his use of this suggestive form of address, and she looked across at Denzell with an expression that seemed to indicate she had only just taken in his presence, and was beginning to realise its implications.
A gleam of amusement lit his eyes, but his attention was claimed by Verena.
“But why did you say anything at all?” she demanded, unsure as yet if she was glad or sorry he had done so.
He met the uncertainty in her gaze, and admitted frankly, “Because I was intrigued — or so I believed then. Yet only at my sister’s wedding did I recall I had neighbours who bore the same name as you.”
“Neighbours!”
“My father’s estates are within a few miles of Mr Chaceley’s. I know almost all your relatives, I believe.” He grinned. “You don’t know it, but you have numerous uncles and aunts and cousins.”
“Have I?”
“Indeed you have, my dear,” broke in Bevis Chaceley, “and you shall meet them all.”
A frown came into her face. “I don’t know that, sir.” She turned to her grandfather. “Why have you come?”
Mrs Peverill bustled in again, seizing her daughter’s hands. “That is just what I have been dying to tell you, my love. Come, why do we not all make ourselves comfortable? Betsey will bring wine, and —”
It was some moments before the company had settled themselves, turning the armchairs inwards so that they might all face each other.
Mrs Peverill, whispering in her daughter’s ear her satisfaction that she should luckily have chosen to don her lilac chemise gown today, settled with Verena at her side on the day-bed.
The two older gentlemen occupied the armchairs, and Denzell, having first gone as he was requested to ask the maid for refreshments, took up a position on a straight-backed chair opposite the day-bed at the other side of the fireplace, from where he could watch Verena’s wondering features as the tale unfolded.
It seemed that Mr Whicham, Verena’s maternal grandfather, had written to inform old man Chaceley of the existence of his new granddaughter after Verena’s birth.
“He had the audacity to add — all the same, these lawyers — the exact terms of his will, with the purpose of letting me understand, I don’t doubt, that he would provide for the chit without any assistance from me.
It was a stiff letter your father wrote me,” he said, turning his fierce gaze upon Mrs Peverill, “and stiffly proud. Don’t mind telling you I was infuriated by it.
Pleased, too, at the same time. Relieved me of the necessity of worrying about the girl. ”
“Naturally you need not have concerned yourself, sir,” put in Mrs Peverill, “once my papa had informed you I was remarried, for he told me he had done so.”
“He had, and damned impertinent I thought him! What the deuce had it to do with me?”
“It was, however, another matter,” put in Bevis, taking up the tale, “when we discovered that you, my dear Verena, were no longer sheltered under your stepfather’s roof.”
“Sheltered!” uttered Verena involuntarily.
Reassurance entered Bevis Chaceley’s handsome countenance. “We know all about it, my dear. Your mama has been very frank.”
“You need not look reproachful,” barked her grandfather. “Your mother had no choice, for I demanded to know why she had left the protection of her husband.”
Mrs Peverill had averted her gaze, looking shamefaced. Verena put an arm about her, and she groped for her daughter’s free hand, holding it rather tightly. Denzell saw Bevis nod with approval.
“That’s the way,” he encouraged her. “Your poor mama has given us the full sum of it. How you helped her to escape, and brought her here in secret, using your own means to do so. I’ve never heard of such selflessness. Dashed if you aren’t a little heroine, Verena!”
“I am nothing of the kind,” Verena said. “I have been all too long a coward. I should have killed him long ago!”
There was an outcry at this from both Bevis and Mrs Peverill.
But Denzell, watching old man Chaceley, saw a light in the aged eyes that he had never thought to see.
He belonged to a bloodier age than this, when a man might have been called to account for such doings as Nathaniel Peverill had been engaged in.
It was plain that to Chaceley, Verena’s words evoked a spirit that spoke to his depths.
Perhaps it even reminded him of his dead son, for Denzell could swear there was a shade of grief lurking in the iron gaze.
Here was the source of Verena’s strength of will.
That incredible iron control that had upheld her through the years of pain and dread.
Iron that had so nearly shielded her heart from the penetration of his own deep feelings.
For it was pierced. He could not doubt it now. Only, would Verena admit it?
The remembrance of the barrier that kept her from him made him glance from the Chaceley men to Mrs Peverill and back again. By George, was this deliverance? Had they come with something more than good intentions — those dictated by old man Chaceley’s conscience, that was clear.