Chapter 20 #2
“This one,” she said, opening a low door, “is for the gallery. Abernathy had pretensions to artistic taste, or he paid somebody to have those pretensions for him. The old inventory is stored in here, mostly simpler landscapes and portraits considered less than impressive.”
Amabel had never gone through them in detail. She simply knew the purpose of the room and, in a general way, what it held.
“I might like those older landscapes,” Richard said, “before Capability Brown put true wilderness out of fashion.”
He went to a group of frames leaning against the wall, the paintings turned away from the light. After flipping past the first three, he stopped, and his posture subtly shifted.
“Find something interesting?” Amabel asked.
He said nothing, nor did he move.
Amabel went to his side. The painting on view was a portrait. She made out that much in the dim light before realizing the art had been badly damaged. The lady’s pretty features beamed joy from the canvas, but the depiction of her fichu was slashed repeatedly.
The young woman in the painting had been stabbed, figuratively. Slashed over and over, until the bottom portion of the painting was more ruin than art.
And yet, her resemblance to her son was plain for Amabel to see. The same smile, the same steady, confident, open gaze.
“Your mother?”
Richard drew in a ragged breath and nodded.
Amabel gently drew him to her, away from the awful wreck of a portrait, and closed her arms around him.
“Don’t fuss,” she said. “I need to hold you just now.” She took him in a firm embrace, and gradually, he reciprocated. She waited until a shudder went through him, followed by another and then another, and still she held him while he and his grief made not a sound.
Richard mustered the self-discipline to search through the whole room of discarded art. He found another portrait and a miniature of his mother. The second portrait, more staid, less youthful, had also been half destroyed.
The glass of the miniature’s frame had been cracked to shards about the edge—the sort of damage a bootheel might have done—but the image itself was unblemished and smiling, also quite an accurate likeness.
Amabel had half dragged him from the attics thereafter, the miniature in his hand.
“Your mother was beautiful,” Amabel said, pausing as a pair of common blue butterflies flitted among the billowing border of lavender.
She had brought him into the sunshine, into the garden she kept so tidy and peaceful.
“Mama considered that beauty a curse, and now I understand why.”
“Enlighten me.”
Richard did not want to say the words, did not want to desecrate this lovely, orderly place with such sordid admissions, and yet, Amabel was equal to hard truths. With her, Richard could face them too.
“The Glen is a beautiful dwelling,” Richard said, wandering down the walkway hand in hand with Amabel. “Wonderful proportions, first-rate construction, but here and there, a panel of the wainscoting has been replaced.”
“I suppose it has.”
Amabel was too kind to hurry his recitation, which was fortunate because Richard had to manage the telling in small steps.
“The front door is impressive,” he went on, as they approached the fountain, “but the window on one side is mullioned, while the other is not. Have you ever wondered why?”
“It’s been that way forever. I assumed mullioned windows went out of fashion, so a cracked window was replaced with clear glass.”
He could not blame Amabel for misinterpreting or ignoring evidence. The whole village had likely ignored evidence for years, or tried to.
“In the family parlor,” Richard said, “your shepherdess was positioned to hide a gash in the mantel. Somebody took a poker to the wood, swung hard, and damaged seasoned oak. That takes a great deal of force, Amabel.”
He waited, hoping Amabel might say the words for him. She remained silent and took the bench by the fountain.
Richard took the place beside her. “Abernathy could not keep staff about the house,” he said.
“Why not? The gardeners and stable lads were content to work here, but people in positions that required frequent interaction with the lord of the manor never stayed on long. That is not only a mystery, Amabel, it points to a secret.”
“You don’t care for secrets. Neither do I. Does this have to do with the missing three hundred pounds?”
“I very much fear it does. Dingle Fothergill told me that Abernathy was a fraud, that the geniality and good cheer were counterfeit, and Dingle was right. Having seen Wealtha in high dudgeon, and recalling your observation that Marie must have been compelled to leave Shepherd’s Glen, I conclude that when private with his wife, Abernathy Blackstock could be a brute of a husband.
Smashing windows, destroying paneling, laying about with a poker… he was dangerous.”
Amabel went still beside him. Richard could feel her assembling the facts—the damage to the house, the staffing troubles, an entire village’s reticence about the past, Wealtha’s behavior when vexed, and of course, the violently damaged portraits.
Blackstock had commissioned them, and Blackstock had all but destroyed them.
Richard made himself say the rest of it.
“Mama would not have left over an occasional cuff on the shoulder or a shove in anger. Her own husband apparently terrified her, made her life a misery, and with his violent temper convinced her that ruin was better than bringing children into such a union. I would not be surprised to learn that she feared for her own life.”
“How she must have delighted in your very existence, then. A fine, healthy boy to love, despite all the dangers she’d faced. You were her consolation in several regards.”
What an interesting conclusion to draw from such a miserable history.
“She loved me,” Richard said, turning his face up to the Yorkshire sun.
“She also feared for me. I thought the problem was Lord Jerome. Even he would have been hard put to stop Abernathy Blackstock from claiming me, the legalities being what they were.”
Had Mama chosen such a lofty protector precisely to intimidate Blackstock if the need ever arose? The question circled in Richard’s mind without urgency. Sufficient unto the day…
No wonder Mama had never breathed a word of her connection to Abernathy Blockstock.
Amabel squeezed his fingers. “Your mother protected you, and now you have the property that might well have been hers upon Abernathy’s death.”
That suggestion also took some pondering. “Ironic, or was Abernathy’s will meant as an apology to a woman he’d wronged terribly? He probably knew by then that Marie had had a son.”
What a sad, tangled web.
“If Orla mentioned your existence to Papa Joseph, he might well have conveyed the information quietly to Blackstock. She’d do that, tut-tut to her spouse over Marie’s worst misstep while inwardly gloating. Papa Joseph did not believe in convenient lies.”
Bless Papa Joseph, who’d put up with Orla far longer than Richard had.
“I am all but certain that Abernathy Blackstock knew about me. That explains the will in all its details. Blackstock could not easily disinherit me without very sordid information coming to light. Maybe he was apologizing to Marie for his abuse, but more likely, he was taking revenge on Orla for her blackmail. She knew of his temper and knew exactly why Marie had left him. He paid to keep her mouth shut.”
“If Orla knew of Abernathy’s temper,” Amabel said slowly, “she doubtless learned of it because Marie made her desperate plight plain to her only sibling.”
Amabel’s word—betrayal—reverberated against the sadness and anger reeling through Richard’s heart, even as he tried to parse what history he knew with probabilities.
“Blackstock,” he said, “bequeathed to Wealtha enough means to attract a husband, but left her poor enough that Orla would have little incentive to prey on her. He wasn’t entirely a demon.”
“Orla has much to answer for.” Amabel squeezed Richard’s fingers. “Our neighbors must have had more than an inkling what manner of man Marie had married, and none of them put a stop to the union.”
That much was painfully obvious in hindsight.
“Abernathy could not keep servants, and half those servants were probably from Dales families—cousins, nephews, and second cousins to folk in the vicinity of the Glen. They knew, they said nothing, they did nothing. Marie might have importuned some of them for help.”
Logic completed the thought: Marie had asked for help, probably from her father or her vicar, and been refused.
Orla had been no sort of ally at all. Marie had taken desperate measures because they were the only option she had left besides fearing for her life until Abernathy landed one blow too many.
“Orla knew this whole sorry tale,” Amabel said. “She would likely have been the first place Marie turned for aid.”
The law allowed no interference between a man and the chattel he’d acquired at the church altar, but Orla had even then had some influence on public opinion. She could have invited her sister to visit. She could have prevailed on her father to intervene.
“I know why you keep this garden so tidy,” Richard said.
“Weeds spread. They take over, creating chaos and choking the life from the flowers chosen and nurtured with such care. The weeds can flourish all they want outside the garden walls, but the garden is for enjoying and should not be a battleground. Rip out the invaders, or they will leave wreckage from wall to wall.”
He was babbling. He wanted to shout and rant and perhaps—difficult admission—throw a teapot out a window. Instead, he clung to Amabel’s hand.
“Orla betrayed me,” Amabel said. “She betrayed her sister, you, Wealtha, Wealtha’s mother… Nobody would blame you for turning her over to the law.”
Amabel was thinking rationally. Richard could barely think at all. “On what grounds would I have her charged?”