‘I’ll do my best to see that he doesn’t. And you deserve a break, Julia. Just think how much news there’ll be to catch up on; it seems such a long time since Alice left us. And I’m sure she’ll let you share her little girl, if your maternal instincts get the better of you.’
Her maternal instincts, Julia brooded. Drew had been hers from the moment of his birth. She it had been who fought for him when Alice lay desperately ill and unable to feed him. That fatherless babe had given her something to live for after Andrew’s killing. She was Drew’s mother, now.
‘You must take a lock of his hair, for Alice,’ Helen smiled. One of his fair, baby curls, now cut off. Drew had remained in his long baby clothes until he walked, though Julia hadn’t entirely agreed with keeping little boys in nursery frocks, she acknowledged, and allowing their hair to grow untrimmed so that many were hard put to know if the child was a girl or a boy. But it had been the custom when her sons were toddlers and she had wished it for Drew, though now he was a real little boy, her hair cut short and wearing his first breeches. ‘Well – if you think it won’t upset her too much. That child is the image of his father when he was little, you know.’
‘Take one of his curls? No – she won’t be upset.’
Not in the way you mean, mother. Alice won’t go all emotional and want to take him from us when she sees a lock of his hair. She never wanted him, couldn’t love him – but you didn’t know that, dearest. And never say Drew is the image of his father, because he isn’t – and please God he never will be.
Only she and Nathan knew, and perhaps Tom, now. And Giles had known; had married Alice knowing she carried another man’s child, then claimed it to be born a Sutton – a Rowangarth Sutton, and Rowangarth’s heir. Little Drew. Two years old, at Christmas.
‘Alice says I’m to take tweeds and tough shoes.’ Julia, too, was adept at subject-changing. ‘They live right out in the country – it’s quite a walk, I believe, into the village to post a letter. And it’s Reuben’s birthday in September,’ just three days after Andrew’s, ‘so she wants me to bring his present back with me.’
‘Dear old Reuben. He misses Alice for all there’s a letter from her every week. That’s why people should know Alice and Tom are married, now. Reuben isn’t getting any younger. There might come a day when Alice is needed here.’
‘But she can return to Rowangarth any time she likes. She’s done nothing wrong!’
‘Of course she hasn’t – but there’s Tom …’
‘A deserter, who could be put in prison for it, if people knew? Is that what you mean? But who is going to tell on him? Not you, mother; not me! I agree with what he did and so would Giles, if he were alive. Tom was a soldier who was pushed too far! He was reported killed in action – the authorities think him dead – so all we need say is that he wasn’t killed at all but taken prisoner and the Red Cross was never told about it. He wouldn’t be the first man to come back from the dead! I see no reason why the pair of them shouldn’t walk through Holdenby, heads high!’
‘Julia, child – hush your anger! You’ll never be rid of that Whitecliffe temper! Small wonder the old lady was so taken with you. And I agree with you about Tom Dwerry-house; there is nothing I would like more than to see them both back here, even though it can’t ever be.’
‘And why not, pray?’
‘We-e-ell, if they were to come back to Keeper’s Cottage – and we all thought that when Reuben retired, Tom would live there, with Alice – if they came back, just what would their position be? Alice is Drew’s mother; Drew – Sir Andrew – will one day inherit, so he would be Tom’s employer …’
‘Mother, how you do run on!’ Julia laughed. ‘I don’t think Tom and Alice will ever come back here. From what I read in her letters, she’s well suited in Hampshire. But I would like her to be able to visit us, from time to time. Tom would understand her need to see Reuben. And remember, she is still Drew’s legal guardian.’
‘Exactly – and that’s one reason I want it to be known she isn’t Alice Sutton any longer. I would like her to come home to Rowangarth whenever she has a mind to. She was my son’s wife, albeit for less than a year, and I cared – care – for her, deeply. And she’ll never take Drew away from us, I know it.’
‘She won’t. Not ever. I know it too, dearest. So what are we worrying about? I’ll have a talk with Alice and Tom – see what they think. We’ll be able to work something out and had you thought, there might soon be a pardon for deserters, so Tom wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of and never, ever, anything to be ashamed of. He fought in the trenches which is more than Elliot ever did!’
‘Julia! Why ever must you bring him into it? And why, since we are talking about your cousin –’
‘My nasty, over-indulged, awful cousin!’
‘Talking about Elliot,’ Helen went on, calmly, ‘why do you always get so prickly when his name is mentioned and make excuses not to meet him?’
‘Because I detest him, mother. No, I hate him. I dislike his womanizing and his arrogance and I won’t ever forgive his mother for arranging two safe postings for him when he joined the Army. She bought them, for him!’
‘You mustn’t say that of your Aunt Clemmy!’
‘Not even when it’s true?’ Julia jumped to her feet and stood, arms akimbo, at the window, staring out across the lawns and the wild garden to Brattocks Wood. ‘And I hate him because he’s alive – because he hardly got his boots dirty in that war, yet Robert and Giles and Andrew will only be names, soon, on a war memorial!’
And she hated him, too, for what he had done to Alice, and the fact that they could never be sure that one day he might not say, ‘Giles’s son? Are you sure …?’ That was the reason she hated him so much, though she could never speak of it. Giles was Drew’s father as far as her mother was concerned, and if she ever learned the truth of their deception, her heart would break.
‘Oh, darling – forgive me?’ Julia hurried to her mother’s side, falling to her knees, laying her head on her lap as she had done since childhood. ‘And try to understand my bitterness?’
‘I do.’ Helen dropped a kiss on her daughter’s head. ‘I know what it is like to lose the man you love, always remember that, will you, when you think the world is against you.
‘And go upstairs, why don’t you, and take a peep at Drew, then come with me for a walk around the garden, before the light goes. This is such a beautiful evening. Let’s walk quietly, and count our blessings?’
‘Let’s. I won’t be a minute.’ Blessing-counting. It always worked for her mother, Julia thought sadly as she opened the nursery door. Why, then, did it do nothing for her? Why could she never accept Andrew’s death nor cease to want him until her body throbbed and ached from it? And why, no matter what her common sense told her to the contrary, did she still fear the harm Elliot Sutton could do?
‘Alice – I do so long to see you,’ she whispered as she tucked in the cot blankets. ‘You can’t know how I have missed you; how much I would give to have you back here.’
But Alice would never return to Rowangarth.
Clementina Sutton began her scheming the moment she learned about the people next door, in Cheyne Walk. She had been anxious, during the war, about the house standing empty next to hers, worrying that the Army would commandeer it as a billet for soldiers or, worse, that it would be filled with refugees, foreign refugees, thus lowering the area in general and the value of her own property in particular.
She had bought the London house for mixed reasons, though mainly to use for entertaining