Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
As the coach rolled away from the little cottage, Isabel climbed the stairs to Connie’s room. As she knocked and entered, she heard an audible sniff. She looked across at the bed in time to see Connie stowing a handkerchief beneath her pillow.
‘The quicker you are well, the quicker you will see him again,’ she said, taking the chair beside Connie’s bed.
Connie smiled. ‘Silly of me to cry, but I always seem to be saying goodbye to Bas.’
Isabel regarded the girl. Although pale and wasted from the fever, the likeness between this girl and her brothers was unmistakable. The quality in the men that gave them a rugged attractiveness, in their sister produced an ethereal beauty.
Connie smiled and looked around the room. ‘Lady Somerton, you didn’t have to stay. I am sure it must be perfectly beastly to be cooped up in this tiny cottage.’
Isabel shook her head. ‘Not at all.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘Can I share something with you?’
Connie nodded.
‘Not only am I glad to be of some use, but I like it here.’
‘But it’s so small compared to what you are used to. Brantstone must be very grand.’
‘It is, but that doesn’t make it a home. This cottage may be small, but this is a proper home, Constance.’
She refrained from saying that what made it a home was the invisible ingredient: love. There was no love at Brantstone.
Connie shook her head and smiled. ‘Please don’t call me Constance. The only person who calls me that is Bas, and only when he’s cross with me. Everyone calls me Connie.’
Isabel smiled. ‘Connie it is. And when we are alone, you can call me Isabel.’
‘Oh, that wouldn’t be right.’
‘Please. I would be honoured.’
‘Isabel,’ Connie gave her a shy smile, ‘I haven’t thanked you for everything you have done for me.’
Isabel looked down at her hands. Two compliments in one morning?
‘It was nothing,’ she said.
‘Oh no, Mrs. Mead told me what you did. I owe you my life.’
‘Ah, now you are just exaggerating. It was your own sturdy constitution and Mrs. Mead’s devotion that pulled you through,’ Isabel said.
Connie’s cheeks dimpled. ‘I don’t think so. Sebastian told me you looked after him too, after Waterloo.’
This time, the heat burned in Isabel’s cheeks as her mind flashed to that night in London when she had sat with him in the dark hours.
‘Again, Bennet did all the work.’
Connie smiled. ‘Oh, dear Bennet. I am looking forward to seeing him again. He’s been here a few times with Bas and he is such fun. But please don’t underplay your role. You rescued Bas from that awful hospital and he said that when he was very ill you sat with him, like you did with me.’
Isabel cleared her throat, as her mind’s eye played over the strong, muscular body she had nursed all those weeks ago in London.
‘He wasn’t so very ill. I just kept him company.’
Connie looked up at the ceiling. ‘I don’t believe you.
I know what wound fever is. When he came back from Spain, after Talavera, he was very ill.
Dr. Neville thought he would die. I heard him saying the wound had been badly treated.
He had to operate again on our kitchen table.
The doctor said Bas was lucky not to have his leg amputated.
Afterwards, Mrs. Mead said I was allowed to sit with him and hold his hand and adjust his pillows, offer him a drink of water or read to him.
So I did. I probably drove him to distraction. ’
Isabel recalled Sebastian using those same words to Connie when she had woken the morning her fever had broken. That explained the joke between them.
‘Sebastian really is the best of brothers, Lady Somerton,’ Connie said.
‘He is,’ Isabel agreed. ‘I wish I had a brother to care for me as much as yours do for you.’
Connie looked up, a smile dimpling her cheek.
‘I am very spoiled.’ Her face darkened. ‘I feared the worst when I heard he had been wounded again. I couldn’t bear to lose Bas. I am so glad you found him.’
‘It was lucky for both of us. Brantstone needs its lord and I think he will be a good one.’
‘So do I,’ Connie said.
Isabel rose to her feet and circled the room. The walls were crammed with paintings, some in oil, and others watercolours or pencil sketches.
‘These are very good.’ She glanced back at Connie. ‘Are they your work?’
A faint stain of colour rose to the girl’s pale cheeks.
‘Some, but not all. These days I paint miniature portraits and it gives me a little income. I’ll show some to you when I am allowed out of bed.’
Hearing an echo of her brother in the impatient tone, Isabel smiled.
‘You will get out of bed when I say.’
‘I suppose, now I am Lord Somerton’s sister, I won’t be able to keep painting.’
Isabel shrugged. ‘Maybe not for commissions.’
Connie’s mouth tightened and Isabel saw her brother’s stubborn nature in the glint of her eyes.
‘I have no intention of becoming one of those fragile, useless little women who sit around painting vases of flowers, Lady… Isabel.’
‘I will be starting a school in the dower house next year. Perhaps you can help me?’ Isabel ventured.
Connie raised an eyebrow, and Isabel laughed. ‘Yes, it is for those fragile, useless little women, but the school is just a means to an end.’
She told Connie of her plans for the financing of a charity school in Manchester. Connie’s eyes widened.
‘Oh, I’d love to help, but only if I can help with the other school.’ She paused. ‘If Bas allows me, of course.’
Isabel’s mouth quirked. While gratified by Connie’s response, she had conveniently ignored the fact that Sebastian had forbidden the school in the dower house.
Perhaps with Connie’s help she could persuade him to change his mind.
She couldn’t imagine Sebastian saying no to anything Connie set her mind to.
She turned back to the paintings on the wall.
‘Those landscapes by the door are mine,’ Connie said. ‘The rest are mainly mother’s. She was very good. Father told me that after her first husband died, she kept herself and her baby by selling paintings. I wish I’d known her, but she died when I was born,’ Connie added wistfully.
‘It seems you have inherited her talent,’ Isabel said.
‘We all have to some extent. Matthew does excellent lithographs and Sebastian, like me, is very good at people. The picture in the black frame by the fireplace is one of his.’
Isabel turned to inspect the pen and ink sketch of two small children; Connie and Matt, she surmised.
The drawing, executed with perfect confidence in strong, clear lines, captured the essential characters of the two youngsters.
She thought of the little sketches in the margins of the prayer book and recognised the same confident hand.
‘The artist’s eye seems to sit oddly with his life as a soldier,’ Isabel said, more to herself than to Connie.
‘Even as a soldier, he never lost the opportunity to capture a moment. Do you want to see some of his work?’
Isabel nodded, her curiosity about the soldier artist piqued.
Connie pulled herself up in the bed and pointed at the chest of drawers. ‘In the bottom drawer of my chest you will find a book wrapped in a Spanish shawl. Can you get it out?’
Isabel complied, handing the parcel to Connie. The girl ran her hands over the bright embroidery of the fringed shawl.
‘Bas sent me this from Spain,’ Connie said. ‘It’s too beautiful to wear.’
She carefully unwrapped the parcel, revealing a small notebook. Its leather cover was stained and one corner appeared to be badly charred. She handed it to Isabel. ‘You can have a look but don’t tell Sebastian I have it.’
Isabel turned over the battered object in her hand.
‘What happened to it?’
Connie bit her lip. ‘When he came back from the war, after Talavera, it was like he had a terrible sadness inside. One day he lit a fire and threw a whole lot of letters and other documents onto it but this book fell out and I rescued it when he wasn’t looking.
I had taken a peek at it when he was ill and the drawings are so good. I couldn’t bear to see it destroyed.’
Isabel looked down at the little book. The actions Connie described seemed at odds with the Sebastian she was coming to know. She sat down on the chair beside the bed and opened the book to the inscription on the first page.
My darling Sebastian. Christmas 1792. Mama.
Her heart lurched. It had been a gift from his mother to her son.
Like the portrait, the little sketches were done in pen and ink, executed in a hand that became more confident with time.
The early sketches recorded life in Little Benning: the vicarage and scenes from around the village.
She recognised the church and market square, peopled with the villagers, the character of each recorded with affection and accuracy.
A long gap moved the story to a troop ship bound for Spain and then to the Peninsula where the life of an army on active campaign came to vivid life.
Sketches of encampments peopled with the soldiers, their women and children mixed with Spanish villagers, toothless peasants offering oranges or other produce for sale.
She recognised the face of Harry Dempster in several of the drawings and, as the war progressed, the face of a young woman, identified only in the first sketch as ‘Inez, Lisbon, 1808’, began to dominate.
Inez.
Isabel caught her breath. Here was the woman who still haunted Sebastian.
Inez appeared in various poses, even one of her asleep, her long, dark hair flowing over the bolster.
Isabel turned to the last sketch of the young woman; a head and shoulders study, the hair carefully arranged to fall in ringlets around her oval face.
He had caught the sparkle of laughter in the woman’s dark eyes and her gentle smile.
Her love for the artist spilled through his pencil and Isabel, struggled to control an emotion she had never encountered before …
Jealousy? She had never known what it was to love a man so much that it shone from your eyes like a candle in the dark and she yearned to share what Inez had known.
Connie leaned over to see what had caught Isabel’s attention. ‘Oh, that’s Inez. I don’t know who she is. Sebastian has never spoken of her in my hearing.’ An unspoken ‘but’ lingered at the end of the sentence. Isabel raised her eyebrows encouragingly.
‘When he was very ill, he called her name often, but...’ Connie paused and then said, ‘I think she must be dead.’
Isabel said nothing. It was not her story to tell.
She hadn’t needed words to know how Inez had died at the hands of the French.
It had been written in the deep lines that grooved Sebastian’s face even while he struggled to keep his tone neutral.
Little wonder he could not speak of her to his siblings.
Inez, she thought, if only you knew that he still carries the memory of those beautiful, laughing eyes and your horrific death. Would you be angry? Would you want him to let you go and learn to love again?
She flicked through the blank pages that remained and on one page, unmarked in any other way, she found three words.
Sebastian had written ‘Where is God?’ in such haste and fury that the ink from his pen nib had sputtered, casting drops of ink across the page like spots of black blood.
Isabel stared down at the page and traced the words with her finger—the cry of a man who had been forsaken.
The words burned with his anguish and her fingers contracted.
This little book held nothing but unhappy memories for the man who had consigned it to the flames.
She hastily rewrapped it and laid it back in its hiding place and hoped Sebastian never knew of its existence.
The girl lay back on the pillows, watching her.
Isabel straightened her apron and said, ‘I have tired you. I’ll let you get some rest.’
Connie shook her head. ‘No, it has been nice to talk to you. I am so looking forward to going to Brantstone but I have so many questions to ask you. I’ve never even visited a grand house before.’
‘Then you really must get some rest and regain your strength, and we will talk later. We must get you well, if you are to be at Brantstone in time for the ball.’
The girl’s eyes shone. ‘A ball? A proper ball? How wonderful. I shall certainly be well enough for that.’
As Isabel turned to go, Connie caught her hand. ‘Thank you for being Sebastian’s friend.’
Isabel laid her hand over the girl’s. ‘And yours, I hope.’