‘Lady Graham?’ Beth straightened.
‘Beth—what are you doing here?’ Lady Graham said. Then with a groan, the elder woman stumbled against her in what seemed to be half-embrace and half-faint.
‘Lady Graham? What is it? What has happened?’
‘My son is dead.’
‘Ren?’ Beth’s heart thundered, pounding against her ears so loudly that its beat obliterated all other sounds. Every part of her body chilled, the blood pooling in her feet like solid ice. Her stomach tightened. The taste of bile rose in her throat so that she feared she might vomit.
‘No, Edmund,’ Lady Graham said.
‘Edmund.’
A mix of relief, sorrow and guilt washed over her as she clutched at her mother-in-law, conscious of the woman’s trembling form beneath her hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Edmund was Ren’s brother. He was a friend. He was a country gentleman. He loved the land, his people, science and innovation.
‘He was a good man,’ she said inadequately.
Then, above the thudding of her heart, Beth heard the approach of quick footsteps. With another sob, Lady Graham released Beth’s arm and Beth heard her maid’s comforting tones and the duet of their steps cross the floor and ascend the stairs.
Again disoriented, Beth stepped to the wall, but stumbled over her cane, almost falling. The wall saved her and, thankfully, she leaned against it. Her thoughts had slowed and merged into a single refrain: not Ren, not Ren, not Ren. Her breath came in pants as though she had been running. She felt dizzy and pushed her spine and palms against the wall as though its cool hardness might serve as an anchor.
That moment when she’d thought...when she’d thought Ren had died shuddered through her, sharper and more intense than the pain she now felt for Edmund.
And yet, Edmund had been her friend. Good God, she had spent more time in his company than that of her husband. Ren was but a name on a marriage certificate—a boy who had been her friend, a man who had married her and left—
‘Beth?’
Ren’s voice. Beth’s knees shook and tears prickled, spilling over and tracking down her cheeks. Impulsively she stretched out her hands. For a moment she felt only emptiness and then she touched the solid, reassuring bulk of his arm. Her hand tightened. She could feel the fine wool under her fingertips. She could feel the hard strength of his muscles tensing under the cloth and recognised the smell of him: part-cologne, part-fresh hay and part his own scent.
‘You’re here?’
His presence seemed like a miracle, all the more precious because, for a moment, she had thought him dead.
Impulsively, she tightened her hold on him, leaning into him, placing her face on his chest, conscious of the cloth against her cheek and, beneath it, the steady, constant thumping of his heart.
* * *
Her hair smelled of soap. The years disappeared. They were chums again. He was Rendell Graham once more. He belonged. His hold tightened as he felt her strength, her comfort, her essential goodness. Strands of her hair tickled his chin. He had forgotten its vibrancy. He had forgotten its luminosity. He had forgotten how she seemed to impart her own light, so that she more closely resembled angels in a church window than flesh and blood.
And he had forgotten also how she made his senses swim, how he wanted both to protect her above all things and yet also to hold her, to press her to him, to take that which he did not deserve, breaking his word—
‘Excuse me, my lord.’ Dobson entered the hall, clearing his throat.
Ren stiffened, stepping back abruptly. ‘Don’t!’ he said. ‘That is my brother’s name.’
‘I am—um—sorry—my—Master Rendell, sir.’
Ren exhaled. It was not this man’s fault that he had called him by a name he did not merit. ‘Yes?’
‘There are a number of matters we must discuss,’ Dobson said.
‘Very well, I will see you in the study shortly.’
Dobson left. Ren glanced at this slight woman...his wife. She was as beautiful as he remembered—more so since her body had rounded slightly so that she looked less waif and more woman. Her skin was flushed, but still resembled fine porcelain and she held herself with a calm grace and composure.
He’d tried to paint her once. It had not worked. He had not been able to get that skin tone, that luminosity. Of course, that was back when he still painted.
‘I am sorry,’ Beth said, angling her head and looking at him with eyes that couldn’t see yet saw too much. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you or your mother?’
‘No,’ Ren said, briskly. ‘No. You should not be wasting your time with us. Jamie will need you. He was as much Edmund’s brother as I.’
Despite the four-year age difference, Edmund and Jamie had shared a common interest in the scientific and a devotion to the land.
Worry and shock flickered across her features. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I must tell him. I don’t want him to find out from someone else. Except I don’t even know yet what happened. Edmund could not have even reached the Continent.’
‘Cholera outbreak on board the ship.’
Ren still couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to survive duels, crazy horse races, boxing matches and drunken gallops while Edmund had succumbed within days of leaving home.
‘He didn’t even see battle?’
‘No. Would it have made it better if he had? If he’d died for King and country?’ Ren asked, with bitter anger.
‘I don’t know. It wouldn’t change that he is gone.’
She was honest at least. Most women of his acquaintance seemed to glamorise such sacrifice.
‘Will there be a—a funeral?’ she asked.
‘We do not have a body.’ He spoke harshly, wanting to inflict pain although on whom he did not know.
‘A service, at least? I want—I need to say goodbye. The tenants, too.’
‘It is not customary for ladies to attend funerals,’ he said. The need for distance became greater. He must not grow used to her company. He must not seek her advice or her comfort. He must not rely on her. Beth had never wanted marriage to anyone. She valued her independence. Moreover, she belonged here in the country. Indeed, familiarity with her environment was an integral part of her independence.
And Graham Hill was the one place he could not live.
‘You know I have never been bound by custom.’
That much was true. If custom were to prevail she should be housebound, dependent on servants. Instead, she rode about her estate on that tiny horse and ran Jamie’s house and even aspects of the estate with admirable efficiency.
He forced his mind to shift. He was not here to analyse the woman who was his wife in name only, but to bury his brother ‘in name only.’ Efficiency was essential. He must take whatever steps were needed to cut his ties with the estate. To stay here was torture. Graham Hill was everything he had loved, everything he had taken for granted as his birth right and everything which had been ripped from him.
For a moment, he let his gaze wander over the familiar hall with the huge stone fireplace and dark beams criss-crossing the high arched ceiling. He had been back maybe five times since he had learned the truth, since he had learned that he was not really Rendell Graham, the legitimate child of Marcus Graham.
Instead, he was the bastard offspring of a mediocre portrait painter.
Abruptly, he turned back to Beth.