Chapter Twelve #2
Her heart broke again as she swallowed, waiting until his servant closed the door behind him. Phillip had stopped now just out of reach, a frown upon his brow, as if he could tell she was upset about something.
‘While I was gone I have been thinking…about our relationship.’
The blue in his eyes silvered.
‘I have been thinking about all the things that would be impossible to accomplish should we keep on going the way we are. For one I think that you should have your own heirs and to do that you need to be married. It seems the problem of infertility is seldom the man’s fault and it may have been Gretel’s sickness that stopped her from conceiving.
I know that you may say now such a thing does not matter to you but there will come a day when you will wish differently.
’ She had rehearsed this but the words that spouted out sounded wooden and strange even to her ears.
The Earl stood very still, his face unreadable.
‘What has happened since I have been gone, Wilhelmina? Why are you saying these things?’
‘Because I don’t wish to stop you being happy.
I am barren and I do not care to ever be married again.
But you…’ She took stock and made herself go on.
‘Everyone in Society will expect you to take a wife. Our relationship is a more transient one and in a year or in two, when delight fades, what happens then? What happens when being lovers lessens us both?’
‘You honestly think all of this?’
She looked him directly in the eye and lied. ‘I do. I believe it has been a lovely interlude and a time that I will never forget but I don’t want scandal and I need my independence.
‘I am thinking of leaving London after the sale of Belton Park has been finalised. I want to travel and see Europe and I want to be free.’
‘You sound like Arabella Montague when you talk like that.’
‘Perhaps I am more like her than I realised.’
‘Perhaps you are.’ The words were not complimentary.
‘We never wanted permanency, my lord. We both stressed that. No legal binding. Nothing to regret. An affair that would ultimately have an ending, a way of growth for us both before we moved on to other things. More sensible choices.’
‘Then why did you make love to me like you did if you were thinking like this a week ago? It did not seem like an ending at all to my mind.’
‘Because you are a good lover and I have appreciated our delight. But I think it unwise to continue something that can only eventually hurt us both, and the longer we go on the harder it will be to simply stop. Then we will hate each other. This way we have a chance to remain friends.’
He turned away, his hands fisted at his sides. Angry. She should have expected that.
‘You love Elmsworth Manor. You have recovered the damaged relationship between you and your brother. You have a place here in Society and a way to ensure your future. With me it would be harder, I would just be in the way…’
‘Stop. This is your decision, Wilhelmina, not mine. Stop telling me what to think.’
‘You are right. It is my decision.’
She couldn’t say anything else because to qualify this ending with more would leave them both in limbo and in peril. She needed to be strong.
He looked every inch the Earl again now, his face bland and his bearing prickly.
He gave the impression of simply wanting her gone.
‘You have my address in Hampshire, Mrs St Claire. If you wish to get in contact with a more honest explanation I would appreciate it, because I do not believe this one.’
She felt her teeth clench together as she pasted a smile on her face. And then she left. She simply turned and opened the door and went through it.
The end. Of her. Of him. Of delight.
Her name was all over the city.
Wilhelmina St Claire. Murderer. Whore. Liar. Cheat.
And her continued absence reinforced the rumour.
It was Oliver who gave Phillip this news when he arrived at Elmsworth Manor from Nettleford Park late one afternoon two weeks later.
Phillip had spent much of the time since being back in Hampshire with his brother and he’d told him a little of his relationship with Willa because his hurt was so huge he could not keep it all in and because being close to Oliver was such a relief after years and years apart.
‘Mr Simon St Claire, Lionel St Claire’s cousin, has presented papers to a court of law with witnesses for his serious allegations against Wilhelmina St Claire.
Your name is in the broadsheets, too, Phillip.
It seems someone was following your every movement and recorded all the places and times that you met with her.
At your house or at hers and always overnight. Scandal has a certain fervour to it.’
Phillip ignored this. ‘What do we know of the man?’ His voice was furious.
‘Nothing much yet but we can easily find out. Do you believe this gossip?’ Oliver framed the question with care.
‘No. I believe Simon St Claire wants the house and land back in the family and he sees this as the way to do it. Wilhelmina implied the man had been threatening her and obviously this was how. He found an assortment of witnesses who have a vested interest in lying and slammed her with the threat of legal action.’
‘Why the hell would she run, then?’
‘I hope it was because she was trying to protect me.’
‘From rumour and conjecture? Surely she knows you have dealt with that all your life, just as I have. You’ve been together for weeks now. My question is, why the hell wouldn’t she know that you’d protect her?’
‘Because our relationship was complicated.’
‘How complicated?’
‘There was never meant to be any permanency. It was completely physical and that was all.’
Unexpectedly Oliver began to laugh. ‘God’s teeth. You don’t know the ways of women, brother. No lady would simply bed a man without it meaning more. Ask Esther. Women simply do not work like that.’
‘Willa said she didn’t want marriage. I told her I didn’t, either. All she wanted was delight.’
‘Delight?’
‘To feel what it was like to have good sex.’
‘And did you?’
‘Better than good.’
Another burst of laughter had Phillip standing to speak.
‘I’ll go across to London and try to work out a plan to clear her name. After that I will go and find her.’
‘We. We can find her and bring her back. You can’t do this by yourself, Phillip, and I am here to help.’
Before they went back to London, Phillip and Oliver journeyed across to Belton Park the following morning.
Belton Hall was bigger than Phillip had expected it to be but every bit as ugly. It was made of a dark pitted stone and was disproportionately high, giving an instant first impression of the facade almost falling over against a moving sky.
When they knocked at the door a woman who introduced herself as Mrs Heron the housekeeper answered. She said that Mr Simon St Claire had not called in to Belton Park for a month or more now and she was not expecting him back.
Her tone implied she did not think much of the man, and so Phillip took his chance to find out more.
‘We are here because we are friends of Mrs Wilhelmina St Claire, and she is in trouble.’
Her demeanour changed instantly as she looked around and gestured them in, closing the door straight away behind them and taking them through to a small salon off the main entrance.
‘I have heard talk of the Park’s ownership being changed.
But my guess is that Mr Simon St Claire threatened Mrs St Claire and she gave in, her being a woman on her own and scared.
The former master’s wife was an angel, and none of the St Claires ever deserved the likes of her, is what I also think.
Her husband was a mean man and his cousin is of exactly the same ilk, and now I am hearing stories of Mrs St Claire being missing and ideas spun around the why of it, too. ’
‘She has been accused of murder.’ Phillip brought the worst charge up first. ‘It is said in the legal document that Mr Simon St Claire has presented that his brother was pushed to his death off an upstairs balcony by his wife.’
‘Poppycock. Who was it that said that?’
‘The gardener, I think.’ Oliver spoke now. ‘He was the one who signed his name on the accusation.’
‘Trevor Dell, then, a man who can neither read nor write. He is here outside so I shall call him in to ask of it. He has not been himself of late and I can now well understand the reason why.’
A moment later a thin old man in rough clothes stood before them all. He had doffed his hat and held it tightly, looking very scared as he did so.
‘Mr Dell. These men here are friends of Mrs St Claire’s and they are trying to help her. They said you signed a sheet of paper that accused her of pushing her husband to his death.’
Tears began to trickle from his old rheumy eyes and Trevor Dell wiped them away with a dirty sleeve.
‘I did not know what I was supposed to do. Mr Simon St Claire said I’d lose my job here if I didn’t sign it at the bottom and so I did.
I wrote my few letters and he was gone away.
Later I heard that Mrs St Claire were in trouble and it seemed the letter I signed were a big part of it.
Mr Kerrick at the village pub read the article out to me about Mrs St Claire that said I saw her push her husband. ’
‘So you did not see Mrs St Claire push her husband?’
‘I did, but not like how the paper says it. He’d grabbed her special book that she writes in and she tried to get it back and over he went. It were a trip more than a push, I would say. An accident that were brought on by his actions more than anything else.’
Phillip nodded and softened his voice. ‘If I wrote up a report of what you have just told us, would you sign this new letter? Mrs Heron and my brother will sign the bottom, too, just to put things right. If Simon St Claire is still in a mind of taking away any of your jobs because of this I can promise you all better ones at my estate, Elmsworth, about fifty miles from here.’
The old man’s eyes began to fill with tears as he nodded.