He’d been such a boy, that unformed youth Pamela took in lieu of the rich, titled and sophisticated man of the world she’d really wanted. The hurting youth she made of him went on lashing out every time his precious isolation was in danger. It really was high time he grew up, he decided, with a wry smile to admit to himself that he’d left it a little late.
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ he told the small and exquisite marriage portrait of Virginia and Virgil that hung in their favourite room, ‘and any other cliché I can think of to get me where you two sat so smugly contented with each other all those years ago.’
For a moment it seemed as if the lovers took their love-locked gazes off each other, focused on him with mocking approval and whispered, ‘About time.’
‘Must be more tired than I thought,’ he muttered as he blinked and looked again.
No, they were as they’d always been, so absorbed in each other he could imagine the exasperated artist demanding they look outwards and let him do what he was here for time after time, until he gave up and painted what he saw instead of what they did. Of course they were still lost in each other’s eyes, every idea in their heads focused on one another, painted lovers caught in an endless moment of loving and wanting each other.
‘A trick of the firelight,’ he assured himself and his great-uncle and aunt’s painted likenesses, then bent down to light a taper from the glowing fire to light a branch of candles. ‘You’ll have to do better than that if it wasn’t,’ he told the oblivious lovers, glad Chloe had closed the door behind her so there was no risk of being overheard talking to a picture.
‘She might not have me anyway,’ he argued with a stretched canvas and a few layers of expensive paint. ‘Little wonder if she’s curious about what she missed and responds to me like a man’s wildest fantasy. Maybe she wants to know what her sister risked so much for.’
He could feel a huge gap opening up inside him at the very idea he might love Lady Chloe and she could not love him back. He shook his head to try to reason it away, or accept the full echoing emptiness of that future.
‘You could give me a clue,’ he told the youthful image of Virginia with so little of her attention on the world beyond her lover’s gaze.
It seemed to his tired mind Virgil spoke this time, ‘You did tell the boy to read that letter, not use it to line his hat with, didn’t you, love?’
Since he’d be a fool not to, he did as he might have been bid, if his conversation with two dead lovers wasn’t impossible.
* * *
‘Lady Farenze was very specific, my lord,’ the portly little lawyer said a few minutes later and took off his spectacles to peer at Luke with apparently mild eyes. ‘We went over her will in minute detail six months ago and I can confirm that her ladyship was of sound mind and very clear about her wishes.’
‘I dare say, but this scheme of hers is ridiculous. No, it’s beyond ridiculous. You must find a way to set this part of Lady Virginia’s will aside and allow me administer the estate instead of Lady Chloe.’
‘Lady Virginia was very specific—either the whole of her will is proved and enacted or none of it. Naturally you will receive this house and the Farenze Lodge Estate under the terms of your great-uncle’s will, but the rest of the provisions of her ladyship’s will must be rendered null and void. Her personal fortune will then go to her blood kin as her legal heirs. By the time it has been fought over and split between all the DeMayes and the Revereux family entitled to a share it will do little good to anyone, but if you fight this document, that is what must happen.’
Luke swore as he paced the room angrily, raging at the devil over the few words Virginia left him to fume over echoing about in his head.
Darling Luke,
Your task for the next few months is to track down Verity Thessaly’s father. I only wish for your happiness, my dear boy, but I suggest you start out by visiting Crowdale’s Scottish estates to look for clues to the man’s identity.
All my love,
Great-Aunt Virginia
So that was his last letter from Virginia; a couple of lines and a cryptic reference? Now he was supposed to do what Chloe least wanted him to do—dig into her sister’s past as carelessly as if excavating potatoes. Curse it; he’d always thought Virginia loved him, despite his faults and managing ways. Now she’d left him an impossible task and expected him to be happy at the end of it. Chloe would curse him up hill and down dale, then refuse to have anything more to do with him if he found out her sister had cavorted with a married man to beget her child.
How could he not suspect Verity’s father was an adulterer when he’d abandoned a seventeen-year-old girl to carry his bastard alone? If so, the damned rogue would have left no trace of himself in Daphne Thessaly’s life, except the unarguable fact of his child and who could prove one way or the other who her father was on the strength of hearsay and rumours? If Chloe didn’t get the truth from her sister, it couldn’t be uncovered when Lady Daphne Thessaly was ten years in her grave.
‘What if I can’t do it?’ he barked at Poulson when he came to a halt.
‘What if you cannot do what, my lord?’
Luke sought a reason for that confusion and found it in the challenge he’d offered to Virginia’s will and her damnable scheming.
‘This ludicrous quest I’ve been given,’ he snapped impatiently.
‘Oh, that’s simple enough. Then you must inform Lady Chloe you are not willing to carry out your task and she will subtract a quarter of the sum put aside to purchase a manor and estate for Mr James Winterley at the end of the twelve months, if enough of you complete your quests, and forward it to the Prince Regent.’
‘That’s devilish,’ he ground out, Virginia was giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
‘Perhaps the word ingenious describes it better, my lord.’
‘However you look at it, my great-aunt has me tied up so tight I’m surprised I’m not screaming. I’d give a great deal to see my brother decently occupied and financially independent of me. Happy is probably beyond him, but at least he deserves a chance to prove me wrong. James won’t accept a penny from me to set himself up in a new life, but such a bequest could change his life.’
‘Mr Winterley might surprise himself and everyone else if he had the means to do so,’ Mr Poulson suggested as if he thought there were hidden depths to one of the most notorious rakes of the ton as well as Tom Mantaigne. The lawyer shook his head as that idea played through it and he realised how much looking it demanded. ‘If he was better occupied, it would divert his resentment from your inheritance of the family lands and titles.’
‘What a fine prospect you do dangle before me,’ Luke said, wondering why James’s dislike still hurt after all these years of mutual distrust, ‘but it still begs the question whether I can do what Virginia asked me to.’
‘Lady Virginia had more faith in you than you do in yourself, Lord Farenze.’
‘I assume you don’t know what she asked, unless you managed to undo this letter and reseal it without leaving a single trace, Poulson, so pray don’t imagine you understand the task she set me until I come back and admit it can’t be done.’
‘I’m sure you won’t do that, Lord Farenze,’ the lawyer said with a smile Luke didn’t trust one bit.
The man eyed the legal documents he’d been working on to transfer the estate and various other pieces of property to their new owners, as if he could imagine nothing finer than