Chapter 4 - Stephen
Stephen wandered listlessly around the property of Bertforth House and found himself in the large greenhouse. It was mostly abandoned, save for the far section that the gardener used for kitchen produce.
The beds closest to the door were the ones Stephen had once used to grow the more common ingredients for his medicinal tinctures.
Though the medical community had largely eschewed herbal remedies in favor of more precise compounds, Stephen still saw the value in having certain plants on hand.
He didn’t see the need to throw away two hundred years of herbal remedies because other things were easier.
He set to putting the beds to rights—pulling the dead plants, amending the soil with the dark loam in the bin near the door. All the while, he thought about his conversation with Miss Ashbury.
Regrettable—that’s what it was. He’d acted like a lumbering beast. Yet there was something about her that provoked him—he’d found himself barking questions at her before he even knew what he was about.
She hadn’t answered any of his inquiries to his satisfaction. Both his mother and Miss Ashbury had been remarkably cagey about the young lady’s past and family. Which meant there was almost certainly something untoward that Stephen needed to discover.
Stephen didn’t think his mother was intentionally keeping things from him; she was a remarkably straightforward, blunt kind of woman. The fault for the concealment lay squarely with Miss Ashbury herself.
What was the lady trying to accomplish? Who was she?
Stephen yanked at the stout stump of a rosemary bush and grunted. It seemed he had arrived home just in time. Vera had his mother’s confidence—so much so that the baroness took her side over his.
Unacceptable.
He heard voices and paused his weeding to sit back on his haunches and listen.
Vera stood just on the other side of the garden wall, hidden from view, but her voice was readily recognizable through the open glass louver above him.
“I don’t think I like him,” a young boy said.
Stephen leaned closer, trying to hear better. Was this boy a contact of hers? Some runner in the network of criminals she was working with?
“It’s far too soon for you to form such an opinion,” Vera replied.
Their voices were clear enough that they must be sitting on the bench just on the other side of the wall. Stephen crept closer.
“He yelled at you.”
“He thought I was an intruder; I thought the same of him. It was all a misunderstanding, readily fixed. You cannot blame a man for being protective of his household and family.”
The boy made a sound of derision. “The household isn’t his. It’s more yours than his. You’ve been here longer, as of late.”
She chuckled. “That’s hardly how things work, and you know it. Besides, it sounds like he was trying to help those less fortunate. Shouldn’t his absence be at least partially excused for that reason alone?”
Stephen frowned. What angle was she playing, defending him? Did she know he was listening?
“No.” The boy’s answer was belligerent, absolute. “You’re more my family than he is.”
“Benjamin, that’s not true,” she said, gently chiding.
Benjamin? Stephen rocked backward on his heels with shock.
This was his brother who was speaking to Vera with such familiarity. Perhaps he’d been wrong all along—perhaps it wasn’t his mother who was the mark, but his brother.
Though what she could hope to gain from a boy of eight, he didn’t know. He racked his brain—what was his brother’s allowance? Or was Vera playing a long game—hoping that the young boy might come into some inheritance?
Stephen’s nose wrinkled. That made no sense. If she were hoping to gain something, a third son was a poor target. He would be a better mark—though Vera seemed to dislike him as much as he distrusted her.
“Listen,” Vera said. “I know that you don’t have a good relationship with him—”
“I don’t have any relationship with him.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, her tone warning against further interruption. “Now is the time to remedy that. Family is important, and every relationship requires work. This world is a very lonely place without family.”
She spoke as if from experience; Stephen’s eyes narrowed.
“I have Mother. I have my brother Anthony. I have you.”
“I might not always be here.”
At least they agreed on one point, Stephen thought.
“Is he going to make you leave?”
“This isn’t about me. Your older brother has returned home. I’m sure he loves you very much, and I’m sure you’ll love him. You just have to try. Relationships are work, remember?”
Benjamin grumbled something too low for Stephen to hear.
Vera laughed. “I guess we’ll find out at dinner this evening, won’t we? Give him a chance. Now come along—Mrs. Portence baked jam biscuits. Let’s find out if she’s forgiven you for sneaking those scones last week.”
Their voices faded into the distance, and Stephen sat there, blinking. So much had changed while he was gone. He didn’t even know his own brother. A great wave of grief threatened to drown him, but he pushed down the emotion in favor of thinking of Vera once more.
If anything, the overheard conversation only made him more curious. What was her angle?
That evening, Stephen frowned at his reflection in the mirror and ran a hand down his face.
Perhaps his mother was right—maybe it was time to shave.
Yet there was something that stayed his hand when he thought about reaching for the razor.
Maybe it was the same something that had him choosing plain, simple fabrics when he’d visited the tailor, the same thing that had him skipping lunch in favor of mucking out the greenhouse.
Penance.
He didn’t know if it was the guilt of leaving India so abruptly—of handing his patients off to another physician with as little care as he’d given the man his clothes—or if it was the pain of losing Samantha. Though “pain” wasn’t quite the right word to describe it, not anymore.
Their relationship had been a brief spark in the pan—a flash of saltpeter. Sometimes, when his head was heavy on his pillow, he wondered if he’d been using the excitement of their romance to try to reignite his love for India.
Stephen adjusted his too-large shirt, tucking it in as tightly as possible before giving up and going downstairs.
The front parlor was awash in the glow of candlelight.
The first thing he saw when he entered was the back of Vera’s head.
She was seated on a velvet sofa, her profile to him.
Her hair was pulled up off her neck in a simple chignon, with sweeping tendrils left to curl against her cream-colored skin.
There was too much of that skin on display, Stephen decided.
Not that she was pressing against the bounds of propriety—far from it. The neckline of her blue-grey dress was modest in comparison to what many women wore to dinner parties. Yet the sight of that luminous expanse, of her collarbones…it felt scandalous.
He frowned and turned toward his mother.
She wore a suit of black brocade that nipped in at the waist, with a large bow to one side.
A profusion of white lace erupted from each arm of her jacket and around her throat.
It appeared as if a great quantity of whipped cream was held in only by her trim jacket.
“Mother. Miss Ashbury.” He nodded at each of them in turn as manners dictated. “Good evening.”
“Stephen.” His mother waved him over, and he deposited a brief kiss upon her cheek. “Allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. Hamish Thornton.”
A man stood from the sofa where he sat next to Vera. It was a testament to Vera’s lustrous skin that Stephen hadn’t noticed him before.
The man was shorter than Stephen, but far broader in the shoulders and across the chest. Something in the way he moved reminded Stephen of a pugilist—but perhaps that was his physician’s eye cataloguing that the man’s nose had been broken at least once before.
He had blond-brown hair, blue eyes, and lines in his forehead that spoke of a lot of time spent in the sun.
He was thick, muscular—a former dockworker, perhaps?
The man stood and held out his hand to Stephen. He shook it by rote, his eyes flicking to Vera. Was this man connected to her in some way?
“How do you two know each other?” He nodded toward Vera as he addressed the man.
The man smiled, and Stephen didn’t like the knowing little glint in his eye. “We don’t, not really, except that Miss Ashbury is a friend of the Marquess Salisbury’s family, and I’m the Marquess Salisbury’s secretary.”
Stephen frowned. The explanation left him more confused than he had been prior. What was the Marquess Salisbury’s secretary doing at his mother’s dinner party?
“I met the Baroness Winthrop at the Marquess Salisbury’s estate here in Devon,” Hamish said. “She and I have been working on a fox problem.”
“It wouldn’t have been a problem, if you’d left well enough alone,” the baroness chided without any real heat.
Stephen instantly reevaluated. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”
Benjamin stood stiffly at his mother’s side, waiting for Stephen to address him.
Stephen suspected the boy had been avoiding him on purpose until now.
Benjamin was the spitting image of their brother Anthony at that age, though perhaps a bit taller and broader through the shoulders.
He had their mother’s dark hair, though there was something about the nose and mouth that reminded Stephen of their father.
“Hello, Benjamin.” Stephen cleared his throat.
“Hello.” The boy jerked a nod and regained his seat.
The room descended into a sudden, awkward silence that Stephen didn’t know how to break.
In the end, it was Vera who came to the rescue. She leaned forward and asked the baroness, “How is Sheldon today? Is he feeling better?”
“He’s eating well, which is a good sign.”
Stephen looked back and forth between the two ladies. Who on earth was Sheldon? And why had no one asked for his assistance? He was a physician, for heaven’s sake.