Sixteen
Rose was still tingling with arousal and bubbling with amusement as she went though the supplies available and plans for their dinner. It was a distracting combination, further complicated by the squawking chicken. Fortunately, Lucy seemed to know what she was doing and only needed a bit of guidance.
The noise and closed doors obscured the sound of horses outside. So Rose was not prepared to find Gavin’s mother in the front parlor when she returned there. She wouldn’t have returned if she’d known.
The older Lady Keighley was sitting on the sofa where Rose and Gavin had recently embraced. She wore her outdoor garments and a sour expression. “A fine thing,” she was saying. “When my only son does not come to me. Forces me to drive through the cold to speak to him.”
The April day was really rather clement, Rose thought.
Their visitor spotted her in the doorway. Her expression grew grimmer. She turned her head away. “I do not know why you wished to humiliate me in that way,” she went on.
Gavin sighed audibly.
Rose had to do her duty. More, she had to support him. “May I take your bonnet and cloak?” she asked. “And offer you some refreshment.”
“No,” replied the older woman without looking at her. “I won’t be staying long.”
Rose supposed she ought to urge her to stay for dinner. It would not then be the cozy meal she had anticipated. Still, here she was. And she was Gavin’s mother.
She and Lady Keighley had never had much to do with each other. As a child, Rose had been a creature of the moors. Later, the quarrel between their two families had made easy relations impossible. Gavin had inherited his strong features from his mother, Rose noted. The broad forehead and square jaw that looked so good on him made his mother forbidding and reinforced her daunting reputation. Or perhaps it was her stony glare.
“Perhaps you might go away, so that I can talk with my son,” Lady Keighley said. Her icy tone implied that she was addressing a negligible person.
“No,” said Gavin. “Rose will not be ordered out of her own parlor.”
“Hers!”
“Ours,” said Rose.
“Ours,” Gavin echoed. He moved to stand at Rose’s side.
The older woman glared at them. “This…arrangement is entirely unacceptable,” she said.
“We were sent here to…acquire the estate from the Duke of Tereford,” Gavin replied. “We are now the joint owners of Yerndon. You got what you wanted, Mother. Can no one comprehend this?”
“Joint!” Her mouth pursed up as if she’d eaten something rotten.
Just like her parents, Rose thought. Nothing was ever good enough. “They’re all angry because the matter was resolved by us and not in the way they decreed,” she said, half to herself.
Lady Keighley reared back as if she’d been slapped. “I beg your pardon!”
Gavin nodded thoughtfully.
“Why does the method matter so much?” Rose asked. “If the outcome is favorable?”
“It is not favorable for you to be married to my son!”
She seemed fond of those two words, Rose thought. They made Gavin sound like a possession.
“I shall apply for an annulment,” said Lady Keighley. “It is the only proper course of action.”
“You don’t have the right to do that,” replied Gavin. “Marriages are not set aside because you don’t like them.”
“We will see about that!”
“We would oppose you, of course. You will only make a fool of yourself.”
“How dare you speak to me in that way?”
“Like a reasonable man? Trying to make a reasonable point?”
Lady Keighley rose with a swirl of her cloak. “I shall not stay here to be insulted!”
“I have not insulted you, Mother.”
“We would like to—” began Rose.
“Insult me?”
“No, I was going to say—”
“Don’t speak to me, you conniving little minx!”
“No,” said Gavin. “You will not speak in that way to my wife. Ever.”
“You would side with a Denholme over me?”
“You are being ridiculous, Mother. Will you let that go?”
Lady Keighley’s face contorted. She bared her teeth in a rictus of rage, shook her fist at them. She made a frightening sight, and Rose couldn’t help shrinking back a little. Gavin put a sustaining arm around Rose’s shoulders. His mother made a low rasping sound. Then she clutched her chest and groaned, sinking to her knees.
Gavin started forward and bent over her. “Mama?” She grasped his coat lapel with one hand, crushing the fabric as if she would never let go.
“Help her onto the sofa,” Rose said.
Old Lady Keighley shook her head emphatically. Pulling so hard on Gavin’s coat that he nearly toppled into her, she struggled upright. “Home!” she ordered, swaying on her feet. “Take me home! At once! I will not stay here!”
“You should lie down for a…”
“No, no, no!” she cried, her voice rising to a shriek by the end.
Supporting her tottering figure, Gavin looked at Rose. “I had better take her.”
“Should she be jostled in a carriage?” Rose asked. Even though it would be a strain to have Lady Keighley as a guest, she didn’t want her to grow worse.
His mother made a slashing gesture. “I won’t stay here!” she repeated.
“Send word to the doctor,” Gavin said. “Ask him to come to Keighley Manor as soon as may be.”
Rose nodded.
He held out his free hand. Rose took it. His fingers were strong and warm around hers. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
Lady Keighley emitted a growl. The sound couldn’t be called anything else.
Rose squeezed her husband’s hand and let go. He tightened his arm around his mother and helped her out.
Her carriage was outside. The coachman had been walking the horses up and down. He pulled up when they emerged, and Gavin half heaved his mother inside. “The manor,” he said to the driver, then joined her.
His mother leaned back against the cushions as they drove, her head tilted back, eyes closed, jaw tight. Gavin asked what was wrong, how she felt, was there pain, but he received only stark silence in answer. After a while, he gave up and settled for bracing her against bumps and jolts.
The journey seemed long, but at last they turned into the lane and stopped before the stone house where Gavin had been born and lived until recently. He sprang down and helped his mother from the carriage. She leaned heavily on him. The door was opening by the time they reached it. “My mother is ill,” he said to Franks, the butler. “The doctor has been sent for.” He trusted Rose for that. “We must get her up to her chamber. Summon her maid.”
His sisters appeared as they were making a halting progress up the stairs. “What has happened?” asked Jillian.
“What’s wrong?” said Janet.
“Mama is not well—” Gavin began.
“As if I could be,” their mother croaked. “After what you have done.”
Gavin’s sisters looked reproachfully at him. He continued helping their mother up the steps.
They left her with her maid to be put to bed and gathered in the drawing room to await the doctor.
“What did you do to her?” Jillian asked Gavin.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You married Rose Denholme,” said Janet. “She’s mad as fire about that.”
“As she often is, about any number of things,” Gavin replied. But he felt a stirring of guilt.
“Not like this,” said Jillian. “What did you say? What did Rose do? Did she insult Mama?”
“No, of course she did not. She never would.”
“Her father did,” said Janet.
“That is irrelevant.”
“How can you say so?” asked Jillian. “You joined up with our enemies.”
“They are not—”
“And driven Mama into a decline,” said Janet. “You must have been an absolute beast. I’ve never seen her like this.”
“I…” Under a rising tide of guilt, Gavin groped for words to defend himself. He had spoken to her calmly. He’d wanted reconciliation. What should he… A memory surfaced from years past. “I have,” he replied.
“What?” His sisters gazed at him.
“She took a turn when our father died,” Gavin remembered. He’d been grieving himself, taking on new responsibilities, and there had been some disagreement about… He couldn’t recall what exactly. But his mother had had a similar attack in the midst of their dispute. The same dreadful contorted expression and sudden collapse. She’d taken to her bed, though she’d issued a stream of orders and complaints from it that had made his tasks more difficult.
The twins looked at each other. “She did?”
“You were too young to recall,” Gavin suggested.
“The house went quiet,” said Jillian. “We crept about like mice.”
Janet gazed at her sister. “As if all the life had gone with Papa.”
“Yes,” replied Gavin as Jillian nodded. His mother had been…furious at her husband’s loss. He remembered that quite well. When the man who’d found Papa out in the fields brought the news of his death, Mama had almost hit him.
Dr. Baring arrived and was taken straight upstairs. He spent nearly an hour with their mother before joining them in the drawing room.
“Lady Keighley is unwell,” the small, plump man told them.
This was obvious, and unhelpful. “What is wrong?” Gavin asked.
The doctor avoided his gaze. “An excess of choler.”
“Collar?” asked Jillian. “What do you mean?”
“It is one of the bodily humors,” the doctor began.
“And signifies irascibility,” Gavin put in. He remembered that after his father died, Mama had risen from her bed whenever there was anything she particularly wished to do. And experienced renewed attacks when she was contradicted. He’d been young and woeful. He hadn’t made the connections.
“Will she be all right?” asked Janet.
“I have advised her to take things more calmly,” replied Dr. Baring.
“But that does not seem to be her nature,” said Gavin. His sisters frowned at him.
The doctor avoided his eyes again. He was definitely shifty, like a man who’d received dubious instructions. “She should not be upset. You must take care not to agitate her.”
“Do whatever she wants, you mean?” Gavin asked. He was beginning to suspect that his mother was feigning illness.
“Of course we should,” said Jillian.
Dr. Baring chose to address the twins. “I’ve given Lady Keighley something to ease her. You should let her rest for a while. I will call again tomorrow to see how she goes on.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Janet.
With a relieved nod, the man departed.
As soon as he was gone, the twins turned on Gavin. “You can’t leave,” said Jillian.
“I’ll stay here tonight.” He’d already made up his mind to that. He would write a note to be taken to Rose at Yerndon.
“You must return home for good,” said Janet. “You must stay with Mama.” She gazed at Jillian and then at Gavin. “Brighton,” she said.
Her sister nodded. “I know it is selfish to think about that now. But we have never been anywhere.”
They both looked near tears.
“Of course we are worried about Mama.”
“We are not very good nurses, though.”
“The doctor said so when you had that fever, Gavin.”
“He threw us out of your room.”
“Said we made you worse with our fidgets and chatter.”
And an antiphonal flow rather like this one, Gavin thought. The twins always seemed to have a larger impact than two mere individuals. “There is some time yet before you are to go.”
“But…”
“I suspect Mama will recover quite soon.” He would need to discover the true nature of her complaint, or pretense. He went to write his note and give it to a groom to take to Yerndon. He tried not to indulge in wistful thoughts of Rose and the very different sort of night he’d been anticipating.
Later in the evening, Gavin went to see his mother, taking a chair beside her bed. She was sitting up, wearing a nightdress and a lace cap. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks rosy. She didn’t look at all ill. “There you are,” she said. “Now we are settled again. We can do what needs to be done.”
“And that would be?”
“You must see, now that I have got you away from that hussy.”
To describe Rose as a hussy was so ridiculous that Gavin nearly laughed. But the situation was too sad for humor.
“You can’t have lost all your wits,” his mother added. She used the sarcastic tone that was designed to make one feel dim. Gavin was quite familiar with it. He felt his temper stirring. He bit off a sharp reply. She was ill—perhaps. There was no sign of it now.
His mother counted on her fingers. “Set this farcical marriage aside. How you let yourself be…cajoled into it, I will never understand. Idiocy, Gavin!”
His anger grew.
“Dispute this ‘joint’ ownership of Yerndon in the courts,” she went on. “The idea! A chit who knowns nothing of estate management to hold land? Ludicrous. It is an insult to you. A calculated snub. It’s as if those London people set out to make a mockery of the Keighleys.”
“They did no such thing,” snapped Gavin. And then, catching a sly, sideways glint in his mother’s eyes, he realized that she wanted him angry. Furious even. Too irate to think or analyze. It was the emotion she knew best. And knew best how to make use of.
He sat back, anger diverted by…dismay.
Suddenly he saw his mother in a different light. Being away from the manor, as he had not been since his school days when things had been very different here, had altered his point of view. She hugged anger to her. It was her friend, her defense, her tool. She’d cultivated it in him, like some sort of internal gardener.
“Yerndon will be ours, as it always should have been,” Mama continued. “The Keighleys will not be scorned.”
Which no one had done, Gavin noted. But the word was designed to enflame. “And Rose?” he asked.
His mother made a dismissive gesture. “She has a home to go back to.”
“There would be talk,” he replied, testing how far she would go with this.
“Well, she shouldn’t have behaved like a lightskirt if she didn’t wish to be talked about. Spending the night with you on the moor!”
“Along with five children.”
“Too young to understand scandalous behavior.”
Did his mother actually imagine that he and Rose had indulged in improper acts in front of the Bront? brood? The most sharp-eyed, intelligent youngsters he’d ever met? That was ridiculous. And…he was letting himself be steered toward an irrelevant argument.
“In time you will bring a bride here,” his mother went on, with the air of one offering a treat. “A nice respectable girl.”
“Someone you can dominate, you mean?”
“What a word!” She gave a false laugh. “Nothing of the kind. But I suppose my advice and guidance are not wholly worthless.”
“You are not really ill, are you, Mama?”
“What?” She fell back on the bed and clutched her chest.
“Dr. Baring—”
“What did that quack say to you? I told him—”
“To order us to do whatever you say?”
“To let you know that my health requires your—”
“Absolute obedience? How could you pretend that way, Mama? You must know how it worried us.”
“I had to do whatever was necessary to bring you to your senses! Am I to hold back when people conspire to humiliate me?”
“You know, Mama, I don’t think anyone actually does that.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “I am not some meek little mouse.”
No, she looked for battles so that she could blame others for her troubles. Gavin didn’t like this observation, but he couldn’t help seeing it. Had she been this way before his father died? He didn’t think so. “And you are not truly ill,” he said.
She bared her teeth. “You have no idea how I suffer!”
“I don’t suppose I do.” He didn’t know how to help her either, though he would have been glad to. “I am going home tomorrow,” he added.
She looked bewildered. “You are at home.”
He shook his head. “Yerndon is my home now. With my wife.”
“But we will have that false marriage—”
“There is nothing false about it.” He met her glaring eyes, carefully not angry. Which was a fierce inner battle.
“She is a Denholme!”
“I am so tired of that fight.”
“You cannot care more for her than for your own mother?”
Gavin started to struggle with the question. How could he possibly choose? Conflicting impulses and loyalties threatened to overwhelm him. Then he realized that he didn’t need to answer. This was another argument he was not required to have. He could care for both of them, as deeply as he was able, more than he now knew, and not stint either one. “It is not a contest,” he said, half to himself.
“Contest? What are you talking about?”
“Simple good sense?” Gavin murmured. He was entranced with the idea—arguments one need not have.
His mother’s fingers twisted the cloth of her nightdress. “You will leave me here to die alone?”
“No, Mama, I will not. I will visit you quite often.”
“Visit!”
“And if you should ever be truly ill, I will move heaven and earth to aid you.”
“I am ill,” she declared in a petulant tone that was not the least convincing. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“But I will not be chivied into needless debates.” He stood up.
“That Denholme chit has ruined you!”
“Or redeemed me,” Gavin said as he went out.