An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (11 page)

We worked in silence for a while, my rolling ocean of thoughts serving as a distraction from the ordeal of being watched so closely. I only hoped he couldn’t read my face and see inside my mind. The herb garden was full of my thoughts, in a thick, heavy cloud, and I wondered wildly if Tristan might be able to pick up on these, as though they would float through his ears and into his head.

‘You seem tired,’ he said. ‘But I probably shouldn’t say that to a lady. You look lovely, of course, but tired. Or weary, rather.’

‘There’s a difference between tired and weary?’ I leaned back and squinted at him through the sunlight.

‘But of course. Tired means you merely haven’t slept, I think. Weary is…’ he waved his hand in the air as though trying to marshal his errant thoughts. ‘Is being tired of the world, I suppose. If you understand me. All semantics of course. If I’m really trying to say precisely what I mean then I should ideally tell you that you look both tired and weary. But once again, one shouldn’t say that to a lady, and I don’t seem to go very long without accidentally insulting you, do I?’

I laughed.

‘So long as it’s accidental.’ Yet I must not flirt with him. He just made it so easy. I decided to change the subject.  ‘How was London?’

‘Marvellous. It always is. Terribly busy, but I did what I went for. Sold a couple of paintings, picked up a commission and a few supplies - shan’t bore you with the details. And got some bits for Mother, of course.’

‘You did all that? You must have been running all over.’

‘You’d think so, but the good thing about London – or one of the good things, rather, is that everything you need is really very close together. The shops are only a few streets apart and my patron doesn’t live far from there. Have you ever been? Or don’t you remember?’

‘No, I – I don’t think I have. I think I’d have remembered.’

‘Would you like to see some sketches I did of the place?’

‘You had time to sketch too?’ I was impressed.

‘I always have time to sketch,’ he said very seriously, and walked over to sit on the grass beside me.

He pointed out the new cathedral, St Paul’s, a few of the shop fronts and a couple of other buildings. But what really held my attention were his sketches of people. I could just imagine them bustling about – the rich, the poor, the old, the young. What an amalgam London was!

Tristan turned the pages for me, on account of my dirty hands, and pointed out the sights here and there, and peppered his narrative with humorous asides about the people he had seen.

‘And this is from the inn on the way back – I stopped to give Brutus a rest and a feed, and myself as well, if I’m honest.’

There were horses now, and clusters of people, and amongst them all, a sight that made my heart stop beating. I couldn’t stop myself from gasping, and started to cough to try and cover it up. But there were tears in my eyes.

‘Ah, you’ve got a good eye, haven’t you?’ Tristan watched me very closely as I rubbed my neck and tried to clear my throat. ‘He does have a look about him, I think, that shows he’s a bad character. That’s Gabriel Raynor, Alice. The man who married my Cassie.’

My Cassie. The words tugged at my heart strings, and I could hardly look at Tristan as he put an arm around me and patted my back as I continued to splutter.

‘Oh no. How awful of you to have to see him. Did he see you? Was it terribly far from here?’

The questions fell out in a rush, and my face went hot.

‘About fifteen miles. But no, I don’t think he did see me. More’s the pity. Sometimes I think I’d like to talk to him again, if only so I could find an excuse to punch him in the face. Not that I probably would, of course. Not really a punching fellow. It’s just – and I hope you won’t mind me telling you this, but – it’s just that even though it was over a year ago now, I still feel …’

‘You don’t have to-’

He rested his hand on the top of my back, and I couldn’t decide if it felt comforting, or like a dead weight.

‘I still feel guilty,’ he finished. ‘That I wasn’t there for her, that there was nothing I could do. Or that there was something I could have done, but I didn’t do it. So many questions. Do you remember, Alice, what I said about the paths we could have taken? It tortures me.’

‘Oh, no, Tristan – please don’t feel you have to explain yourself to me-’

‘Would you mind awfully if I did? Everyone here knows, you know. Mother – she was there the whole time, and the thing is that everyone here was involved with Cassie in some way, and everyone feels guilty. There really isn’t anyone I can talk to – so would you mind awfully – I’ve kept it inside for so long.’

‘No, no, of course.’ I hastened to reassure him. I wanted to hear what had happened, not least to satisfy my curiosity about the girl who had abandoned Tristan, who I could not help but dislike.

‘They told us we couldn’t marry straight away, and while I loved her, loved her more than anything, I didn’t mind. She had always been there, always would, I thought, and so there was no hurry.’ He gave a woeful smile. ‘We were young, and I had things I wanted to do. With the war – there had been a war always, it seemed, so when could I travel? Not that travel was really ever an option. Short of stowing away, there simply wasn’t the money for it. In an ideal world she could have come with me, and we’d have seen the world together – I’d have drawn her in Egypt atop a camel or something, and it would have been a whirlwind – a young lover’s dream.’

He laughed, and I tried to smile with him, but I felt so uncomfortable. I wished he’d either stop, or just get on with it, get to the point and tell me why she’d left him – and for my husband at that.

‘But money was always a problem,’ he continued, ‘so I queried a little about the army. I didn’t want to start at the bottom – not my way, you know. Too dangerous, and Mother would have never liked it – I mean, we aren’t poor, but at that time, before I had begun earning money from the painting and after Father died – it was difficult, and she couldn’t spare anything for a commission.

‘I moped around a lot, you know, with the righteous indignation of youth denied. I was more put out about it than I was about not marrying Cassie, which shames me to this day. All I was bothered about was getting myself a scarlet jacket and dashing into battle, running through a couple of Frenchies while I was at it. It wasn’t like that in the end though – didn’t see a bit of action, just ended up quartered in a village for a few months – terrible food and a lot of grumpy locals, then back home within the year. All for nought.’

He paused and looked at me expectantly, so I supposed I ought to say something.

‘You must have been disappointed.’

‘That’s nothing to how I ended up though. It was Raynor who got me there, you see. That’s the pig of it all. We’d known him a while, always from afar, and you’d hear rumours about him and his family – and his mother was one you’d always cross the street to avoid – but he started coming to the local assemblies every now and then. He was always pleasant, wore nice clothes, and was generous with his time too. A few said he was stand-offish, but he’d always been very pleasant to me. Said it was a shame that Cass and I couldn’t get married yet, but said it was a greater shame than anything to see a young fellow such as myself denied a chance at seeing action. Didn’t see anything between them then – they danced a few times, but nothing you’d comment on. Nobody did.

‘A few days after that he called on us at home, quite out of the blue, and offered to buy me a commission outright. I fairly bit his hand off. He said he wanted to go out there, always had but couldn’t because he didn’t have an heir. Said he’d have me go in his stead, as it were.’

‘And you suspected nothing of his motives?’

‘Not at all - I was happy beyond anything. We all were – Damien wasn’t so impressed when I wrote to him about it, but he’d gone into the navy a few years before and worked his way up from the bottom. That was his way, he always wanted to do everything himself – always has. No matter if it’s the hard way or not.’

‘Do you think he planned it? Mr Raynor, that is. That he sent you away so he could have Cassandra?’

Tristan leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

‘God only knows. I never asked him – couldn’t bring myself to. She was supposed to love me, but he’s older, more cosmopolitan than I was, better off too. Perhaps he did take her fancy. But that wouldn’t have mattered a jot if he’d made her happy.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well I’ve only got second hand accounts of it of course, I heard none of it until I was back from France, months after. But they were caught-’ Tristan blanched, his cheeks pale and sunken against his pursed, pink lips. ‘In a delicate situation, shall we say?’

‘Oh dear,’ I murmured, my cheeks as red as his were pale. Could Cassandra have wanted that which had been so repulsive to me? Could she really have chosen my husband over beautiful Tristan? But perhaps they had been in love – and I would probably never know.

‘Yes. So they were forced to marry, I suppose. I don’t know how she felt about it, it was all too late once I was back.’

‘Would you still have married her? If she’d refused him, I mean.’

‘After they’d been caught in flagrante? I don’t know. These are the roads untraveled.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I like to think so. But I should never have never have left her alone. I shouldn’t have left at all. I don’t think she loved him – perhaps she did when – when they were seen, but then I saw her a few weeks after I’d got back. She looked so… old, I suppose. And unhappy. Washed out like a beggar woman. It was only brief – I just caught sight of her as his carriage passed me in the street. Our eyes met but I couldn’t read her. It was the strangest thing. We’d always known what each other was thinking, but she was just so shuttered. I see that look in you, sometimes.’

‘I don’t-’ I didn’t know what to say.

‘God, I was a mess’ he continued. ‘Nothing had worked out – there was no glory in the war, no Cassie to come back to, and I couldn’t take the disappointment. Started drinking, it was terrible. Tried to paint it out of myself, which worked in the end. I ended up doing some of my best work, if you want to take a positive out of it.’

‘You seem as though you recovered.’ I reached out and covered his hand with my own. I don’t know why I did it, I couldn’t touch him and not feel something, although I still didn’t know if what I felt was yearning or revulsion. Yet he looked so sad, so bereft, I had to do something, to try and make him see that he wasn’t alone.

He looked at me through his pale lashes, bright blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

‘I just feel so guilty,’ his voice quavered slightly as he spoke, and he squeezed my hand tightly. ‘That I wasn’t there. I was greedy, I wanted to see the world but I shouldn’t have left her behind. I should have fought for her, so we could have been married then. After I saw her that time, it was less than a month later that I heard she was dead. I could have done something then. How could it not be my fault?’

‘She made her own choices,’ I said, but even as I did, I wondered how true that was. ‘How did she die?’

Tristan balled his fist and rubbed his eyes roughly.

‘I don’t know. We don’t know. That’s the thing. She looked so ill when I saw her but it was only her face. She could have been pregnant. Her family hadn’t seen her since before the wedding. It was all over so quickly, just a quiet ceremony, and his mother had arranged the whole thing. People said it was a whirlwind romance, but we just don’t know what happened. Damien tried to visit when he was home on leave, but they wouldn’t let him in, and her mother had no luck either. It’s like she suddenly abandoned her family, but nobody knows why. Raynor said it was childbirth, but nobody else saw her body. It felt – it feels as though he killed her. Or really, that I killed her.’

‘Oh no,’ and I held both his hands tightly, fighting the urge to gather him in my arms. ‘You can’t think that, you just can’t.’ I struggled for the words to tell him I knew how it felt to feel guilty of murder, to nearly kill someone, without giving anything away.

‘You’re so kind,’ Tristan said, his face mere inches from mine, his golden hair coming loose from its ribbon and falling in wisps against his face. ‘So nice to me. To sit for me, to let me talk to you about these things. I can’t talk to Mother about it, she blames herself as well – we all blame ourselves – and how can I say these things to Damien or his mother? They’ve lost a sister, a daughter. And all my fault.’

‘No, no, never say it. You just don’t know what happened. Remember, the paths never trodden. You just don’t know.’

‘And here I am bleating to you about my problems when you’ve been through so much yourself. How do you bear it, Alice? The not knowing?’

I looked away, unwilling to meet his eye, unable to bear such close scrutiny.

‘Father’s here now, and getting better. I shan’t have too much longer to wait.’

‘And then you’ll leave.’ Tristan reached for my chin and tipped my face up to look at him again. ‘Shall you mind it?’

‘I don’t want to be an inconvenience – to put you and Edwina out-’

He laughed lightly, and began to caress my neck lazily with one long, slender finger.

‘Never say it, Alice. Mother loves having you here. And I?’

I waited for his answer, mesmerised by the tender feeling of his finger on the soft, sensitive skin of my neck, and the steady gaze of his blue, blue eyes.