Chapter 1 #2
“Certainly, I will. Thank you. In Scotland, whisky has been the only choice available to me for the past three years. A brandy would be pure heaven!”
“Laird MacLeod has treated you well, I trust?” Thomas asked as he poured two fingers of Cognac from a mahogany drinks cabinet in the corner of his study.
“The man has been my saviour. I am so grateful to you for the placement.”
Thomas batted the gratitude away with his hand. “He owed me a debt and was only too happy to have another land steward about the estate to help out, I’m sure.”
“I have worked hard for him to earn my keep. I have learned a wealth of knowledge tending his land. But I simultaneously appreciate it is a lot to ask of a man—hiding a fugitive?” Alexander asked doubtfully as he took the glass Thomas held out for him.
“You are nothing of the sort, Alexander, and we both know it.” Thomas shook his head mournfully.
“That night was the most sinister and deplorable. When Marcus told me how he had found you, covered in your father’s blood, I knew at once you had simply had the misfortune of discovering his body and had no hand in the wretched deed.
Marcus expressed to me how damning the scene would look to a magistrate, and we simply had no choice but to assist in your concealment. ”
“My faithful brother, Marcus. I owe him my life.” Alexander clutched his chest as he thought fondly of Marcus.
“He worked tirelessly to find the real killer, in the hope that we might bring you home. Alas, to no avail …” Thomas explained woefully.
Alexander hung his head, nodding his understanding.
Thomas narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “I regret I cannot allow you to stay here. My staff would undoubtedly see you, and I cannot ask them to harbour such a secret. Whilst I trust them, their sense of justice may outweigh their loyalty to their roles …”
“I would not ask that of you, Thomas. I am merely passing through–”
“Where will you stay?”
“I’ll get a room in Whitechapel. Somewhere shabby where nobody will know my face.”
“Be sure to use the name ‘James MacLeod’,” Thomas reminded him as they both sipped their drinks.
“Certainly. He is who I must be, now,” Alexander declared sadly.
“This is not the life you should be living,” Thomas asserted, angry on his friend’s behalf.
“What choice do I have?” Alexander shrugged.
“And from there? How do you intend to proceed? You cannot simply appear at your mother’s bedside …”
“She knows I am alive–”
“Of course. Marcus wanted nobody else to know, but I had to betray his instruction. When I saw how heartsick your mother became when she believed both her husband and her son had died … I had to tell her you were safe but forced into hiding. I truly do not believe she would have survived if she thought she had lost you too …”
“She has Marcus,” Alexander asserted.
“She does. And your brother is a good fellow, to all intents and purposes, but—forgive me, Alexander—he is not the earl you would have been.”
Alexander blinked at this, processing how his brother had prematurely inherited the role as Earl of Wellwood, upon his father’s death and his own personal staged demise. It had never occurred to him to consider whether his brother would thrive in the role.
“I do hope I will be able to see my brother, as well as my mother …” Alexander mused.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Alexander. It is not a social visit,” Thomas warned. “The Wellwood estate is full of people, all of whom would know you at a single glance and would question the presence of a stranger, should you arrive in disguise.”
Alexander sighed, realizing he had perhaps neglected to fully think this through.
“We need a plan.” Thomas placed his cognac glass on his desk and paced the length of his office, running his hands through his hair.
“My return was not intended to cause anguish to you, Thomas. I will see my mother briefly. Embrace her, express my love, and bid her farewell …” Alexander’s voice caught with emotion.
He took a moment to swallow it back before continuing, “And then I will begin my return journey to Scotland to live out my days on MacLeod’s estate, with discretion and anonymity. ”
Thomas regarded his friend in consternation. “You received my letters regarding Arabella?”
Alexander dipped his eyes, and a lump bobbed in his throat as he swallowed hard. “Indeed.”
“While Marcus is away on business, she is presently residing at Wellwood with your mother …” Thomas said tentatively.
Alexander nodded once, knocked back the remaining Cognac, and placed the glass decisively on Thomas’s desk.
“Right! To Whitechapel!”
Thomas acknowledged his friend’s evasion with a sad smile.
“I wish I could offer you a ride …”
Alexander shook his head, business-like. “I will send you word of when we should meet to discuss how best to proceed.”
“Do.” Thomas opened his study door, checked both ways in the hallway to ensure no members of the household would witness Alexander leaving, and quietly ushered him out the front door.
As Alexander descended the steps, Thomas called out in a whisper.
“Oh, and Alexander!”
He turned back to look at Thomas.
“Keep to the shadows.”
“I always do,” Alexander confirmed, dipped his head, and silently disappeared into the night.
***
Alexander had dodged a rather large rat as he’d climbed the dark wooden stairwell of the tavern to the rooms above. Having passed several rooms that had doors practically hanging off their hinges, he was relieved when he arrived at his own, to note that it had a door intact and a lock that worked.
“Here y’are, Mr MacLeod,” the landlady had said with a smirk as she’d handed him his key. ‘Don’t mind the neighbours!’
Sitting on the thin mattress, he now understood her meaning. The walls must have been as thin as cardboard, since he could feel the vibrations of the raised voices and every word was clearly audible, as if they were standing in the same room as him.
A man bellowing about money and a woman shrieking back at him about his roving eye in the pub earlier that evening.
It seemed to Alexander they were arguing over completely different things, and he was primed to cover his ears with the pillow before noting it was stained yellow and pungently scented from previous occupants.
He placed the pillow on the floor and stretched out on the bed that could easily double as a table. Staring up at a maze of thick cobwebs strung to the coving around the narrow wooden room, he hugged his arms about himself in the hope of getting warm.
His eyes fluttered closed, exhausted from the journey, but sprang open again as his doorknob abruptly turned and somebody attempted to push the door open. He sat upright and listened as two voices whispered.
“Nah. It’s locked—try the next one. That woman might have jewellery …”
Alexander frowned despondently; whilst he had shelter, sleep may be futile in this place. He reached instead for his most treasured possession.
His leather-bound book of poetry. Carefully, he turned the well-worn cover and gently touched the small, shrivelled violet that had been dried and pressed between the pages. His first gift exchange with Arabella, beneath the old oak tree where they would walk, their chaperone nearby.
It felt so long ago—the moment he first quoted Wordsworth to her as they walked, and she had confessed he’d chosen her favourite poem.
He closed his eyes as he felt the papery dryness of the violet beneath his fingers.
He reminisced about his time with Arabella—the coy, vulnerable sparkle in her eye as she’d bent low to pick something from the grass and the small smile that had bothered her lips as she’d presented the violet to him.
He had wanted to kiss her, but their chaperone stood just yards away, and he would never risk the scandal, though he could tell she longed to close the gap between them as much as he did.
Opening his eyes, he realized with distress that the petals crumbled at his touch, symbolic of his hopes for reconciliation.
He may be within mere miles of her, but he could not see her.
Flipping to the back of the book, Alexander removed a floating page—a letter he had inserted there. Of all the coded letters Thomas had generously sent him during his years in exile, this was the one that had sealed Alexander’s acceptance of his new, unfortunate life.
Until that letter had arrived at the MacLeod estate, six months into his stay in Scotland, Alexander had entertained fanciful thoughts that he and Arabella might one day be reunited; that some benign twist of fate would bring them back together and their love might continue to blossom on from the point he had been forced to leave.
The letter declared, however, that Alexander’s kind and benevolent cousin, Edmund Spencer, had taken such pity on Arabella following the scandal of the Hartwell family that he had wanted to save her from the social ruin associated with Alexander’s presumed murderous crime and subsequent disappearance.
Edmund had married Arabella. If Thomas’s reporting were to be believed, it appeared to all as though the marriage lacked passion and affection but was built instead on kindness and respect.
It had taken Alexander a year to reach some form of acceptance.
It should be he who took Arabella Sinclair as his bride and treasured every moment he was fortunate enough to bathe in the glory of her presence.
Instead, his cousin had assumed the role, and his jealousy seethed, despite his knowledge that this was a fortunate outcome for Arabella.
It was a marriage of convenience, as were so many, and Alexander worked out a way to feel grateful that Arabella had married a man who was gentle, considerate, fair, and wealthy. Her life would be comfortable, as it should be, and that was all he could ask for.
Folding the paper back up, Alexander thought back to the letter that he received eighteen months after this one.
The dreaded communication that his cousin, Edmund, had died, leaving Arabella a grieving widow.
Alexander mourned the loss of his good cousin, who had been a healthy, fit, middle-aged man with no expectation of premature death.
This grief was teamed with the hard reality of Arabella’s new, unenviable status. Knowing she was out there, sad and alone, made staying away in Scotland, hiding out, even harder than it had previously felt.
Even though Alexander knew that—should he have any opportunity to transition back into his old life—there would be no hope of salvaging his relationship with Arabella. All hope of anything between them was dashed the moment he had been compelled to run.
The yelling couple in the next room had quietened down a little, but chaos and activity constantly disturbed the corridors.
Clutching the book of poetry close to his chest, Alexander lay down to think of how he could possibly visit his mother without being seen, recognized, and inevitably reported.
Daytime would be too difficult—there would be too many people around.
He sat up suddenly at the realization; it would have to be night.