Shadows and Light (3 page)

“Good morning, Mother,” Liam said. He glanced at the tray on the table near the sofa and instantly became wary. The tea, thin sandwiches, and pastries weren’t unusual fare for a midmorning chat, but the decanter of whiskey was definitely out of place. Elinore didn’t approve of indulging in strong drink, especially so early in the day. That she’d arranged for the decanter to be here meant she thought one of them would need something more potent than tea to get through this conversation.

Turning away from the window, Elinore offered him a hesitant smile. “Good morning, Liam. Thank you for taking time out of your day to meet with me.”

Heat washed through his body, a sure sign that his temper was rising. Making an effort to keep his voice calm, he replied, “Thanks aren’t necessary. You’re my mother. My being the baron now doesn’t change that.” At least, he hoped it didn’t.

“No, but …it does change some things.” She walked over to the sofa, sat down, and offered another hesitant smile. “Please sit down. There are some things I need to say to you.”

Reluctantly, he sat on the other end of the sofa. Then something occurred to him that had him leaning toward her, tense. “Brooke’s all right, isn’t she?”

“Brooke?”

The surprise in Elinore’s eyes, warming to amusement, made him feel limp with relief. His ten-year-old sister was a delightful child, but she did tend to get into scrapes.

“Brooke is fine,” Elinore said, pouring tea for both of them. “A bit sulky since it’s a lovely day and she’s stuck doing lessons instead of working with the new pony a certain someone recently gave her for her birthday.”

Taking the cup of tea she offered him, Liam gave her a bland stare. “I seem to recall another someone slipping money to that certain someone with the instructions to purchase new tack for the new pony.”

“Is that what you recall?” Elinore asked innocently. “Do you also recall that certain someone telling Brooke she could skip her lessons this morning so that he could take her for a long ride so the pony wouldn’t get bored working in the confines of the training ring?”

Liam choked on the tea he just swallowed. “I said maybe. After the midday meal.”

“’Maybe’ means yes.”

“Since when?”

She just looked at him until he wanted to squirm. That was the problem with trying to argue with his mother, even playfully. She knew him too well and remembered far too many things from his own childhood.

“After the midday meal, if she has her lessons done, I’ll take her for a ride and we’ll put the pony through his paces,” Liam said.

“Listening to the two of you determine the definition of ‘done’ should be quite entertaining,” Elinore said placidly.

“I —”Liam leaned back, feeling a bit sulky himself. He wasn’t going to win this round. Brooke was his little sister. His baby sister. He’d already been away at school when she was born, and her first years were odd flashes of memory for him. A baby who drooled and giggled when he made funny faces at her. An infant who had learned to crawl between one visit home and the next, and had sent him into a panic when he’d put her on the carpet and turned his back for what he swore had been no more than a minute, only to have her disappear on him. The toddler
who giggled and ran through the gardens as fast as her chubby little legs could take her. The bright little girl who chattered about anything and everything to the point where he’d nicknamed her Squirrel. The silent, wary child she became whenever his father was around.

As the male head of the family, he’d do his best to be firm about getting the lessons done, but the minute she turned those big blue eyes of hers on him, he’d cave. He remembered too well how it felt to be stuck indoors laboring over sums when the land beckoned.

“Liam.” Elinore sipped her tea and didn’t look at him. “Did you mortgage the estate?”

It didn’t surprise him that she’d known his father had intended to take a mortgage out on the estate. No doubt the old baron had taken cruel delight in telling her he was stripping the land for everything it was worth.

When his father’s man of business had gone over the accounts with him, he’d been appalled at the amount his father had intended to wring from the already foundering estate. And he’d felt an obscene kind of gratitude that the old baron had choked to death while dining with his current mistress before the papers had been signed.

“Yes, I took out a mortgage,” Liam said, gulping down the rest of the tea. “A small one.” Enough to pay off the tradesmen his father owed and give himself some money to honor his own bills for the next year or so. Elinore had provided him with a generous quarterly allowance ever since he’d first gone away to school, and he’d been grateful for it, but now that the estate was his, he didn’t want to live off her money. With proper care and management, the land should be able to provide him and his family with a good living.

“I see.” Elinore set her cup down, then folded her hands in her lap. She focused her gaze on the terrace door. “I’ll make the same bargain with you that I made with your father.”

Don’t treat me like I’ve become him just because I hold the title
, Liam thought fiercely.

“I’ll pay the servants’ wages and the household expenses,” Elinore continued, her eyes still focused on the terrace door. “And I’ll assist in paying any bills for the upkeep of the tenants’ cottages. But I won’t pay any bills for the upkeep of the town house in Durham, nor will I pay for any of your . personal . expenses.”

Meaning, if he took a mistress as his father had done, he’d have to pay for his own pleasure. Not that he thought much pleasure could be had from a mercenary creature like the woman his father had been bedding when he died. On the other hand, he couldn’t blame her for being mercenary. It had showed she’d had a better understanding of his father than the other women the old baron had enjoyed.

“It’s a generous offer,” he said. It stung that he had to accept it, but he was practical enough to know it would be a few years before the estate would recover sufficiently to pay all the expenses. “I thank you for it.”

“Your father didn’t think it was generous.”

“My father and I didn’t see eye to eye about a great many things,” Liam said sharply. “Your father gave you an independent income for
your
benefit, not for my father’s and not for the estate’s. You had, and still have, every right to do with it as you please. Willowsbrook should be able to support itself twice over. The fact that it
can’t
quite support itself is my father’s — and
his
father’s — fault, not yours.”

After a long pause, Elinore said, “Would you like more tea?”

What he’d like was a hefty glass of that whiskey, but he had the feeling they’d only chewed the edges of whatever she’d wanted to talk to him about. “Please,” he said, holding out his cup. He waited until she refilled both their cups. “Would you mind if I sold the town house in Durham?”

“The estate and any other property is yours now, Liam. You may do with it as you please.”

“Would you mind?” he persisted.

When she looked at him, he saw a bitterness in her eyes she’d never allowed to show before. “There’s nothing in that place that I value.”

No, there wouldn’t be, not when his father’s string of mistresses had spent more time there than she had. Well, that was one burden and expense he could easily shed. He’d write to his man of business and set things in motion to sell the town house and its contents.

“Won’t you need the town house when you have business in the city?” Elinore asked.

Liam shook his head. “I can rent rooms easily enough for the two times a year when the barons formally meet.”

He felt a pressure building inside him, and he clamped his teeth to try to keep the words back as he’d done for so many years. Perhaps it was because the conversation was already difficult that he couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Why didn’t you leave him? He was a bastard, and you deserved so much better. Adultery is grounds for severing the marriage vow. You had income of your own, so you were never dependent upon him. Why did you stay?”

“I had three reasons,” Elinore replied quietly. “You. Brooke. And Willowsbrook.”

There was something about the way she said “Willowsbrook” that made him think she was talking about more than the estate.

“You’re the baron now. You have authority and power, not just on the estate and tenant farms but over the villagers and the free landowners, as well. You can use that authority and power for ill or for good.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“How you act will set a precedent for the rest of the people here.”

Liam snorted softly. “My father thankfully didn’t set much of a precedent.”

“If he’d ordered that something be done, that order would have been obeyed. The squires and magistrates in each village would have seen it carried out.”

Liam rested one hand lightly over his mother’s. “He still had to obey the decrees that the council of barons agree upon for the good of Sylvalan.”

“The barons have the power to change the decrees or make new ones, regardless of what the rest of Sylvalan’s people want. And a baron can impose his will over the people in the county he rules no matter what the decrees say.”

She looked pale and unhappy, and he didn’t know what she wanted from him. “To what use do you want me to put my new authority and power?” he asked gently.

“I want you to protect the witches at Willowsbrook — the Old Place this estate took its name from generations ago when your father’s kin first came here to live and work the land.”

Liam sighed, withdrew his hand. “Mother —” “I have something to tell you,” Elinore said hurriedly. “A secret I’d kept from your father because of a few things he’d said on our honeymoon. But you have to know. You have to understand.” “Understand what?”

Agitated, Elinore set her teacup on the table, then walked to the glass door. She stared at the world beyond the glass for a minute, as if she needed to draw strength from the view. Then she turned to face him.

“My great-great-grandfather was a witch’s son,” she said quietly. “He was the eldest son, but the Old Places always belong to the women of the family, and he wanted something to call his own. When he was a young man, he left home with his mother’s blessing. He traveled for a few years, learned a bit about several trades as he worked for his food and lodging and a few coins to rub together. Then, one day, he saw a piece of land that made him want to put down roots, so his mother and grandmother helped him
scrape together enough money to buy the land and build a small cottage.

“He had a gift for knowing what the land could yield and what needed time to ripen. He was canny when it came to business — and he was canny when it came to people. Like the land, he could sense what each could yield and when something or someone needed time to ripen.

“He prospered, and the people he dealt with prospered, as well.

“When he eventually married, he took a witch for a wife. They had several children, and the family continued to prosper. By then, his merchant business was turning a good profit, and he built a large, rambling country house.

“His eldest son went into the business with him, while the other sons and daughters found their callings in other kinds of work. In time, some of them fell in love, got married, and had children, and their children had children.

“And so it went. And while the family never hid their ties to the witches who lived in several of the Old Places, they also didn’t flaunt those ties. As generations passed, not all of the spouses could make the same claim of having ties to an Old Place, and the gifts that come down through the blood became watered down or disappeared altogether.” Elinore paused, then shook her head. “Not disappeared. Nuala says the Mother’s gifts sometimes sleep in the blood, waiting to reappear again.” She smiled sadly. “The name means nothing to you, does it? Our nearest neighbor for all of these years, and you don’t even know who she is.”

“Of course I know,” Liam said testily. “She’s one of the witches.”

Elinore walked back to the sofa and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. She sighed. “Yes, she’s one of the witches. She’s also my father’s cousin, several times removed.”

Having no idea what she expected him to say, Liam drank his now-cold tea to give himself a little time. Given
his father’s animosity toward the witches who lived in the Old Place that bordered the estate, he understood quite well why his mother had never mentioned this aspect of her family heritage. But…

“As you said, it was several generations ago,” Liam said, thinking she was worried about his feelings toward her changing. “You’ve no reason to feel shame because of it.”

Elinore’s eyes widened. “I’m not ashamed of my heritage. If I regret anything, it’s that my gift from the Mother is so weak.” Then she looked slightly annoyed. “Perhaps it’s because it came down through the paternal line in my branch of the family that the men’s gifts from the Mother were less diluted. My brother certainly has a stronger connection to water than I do to earth.”

Liam opened his mouth, then shut it again before he said anything. What was she trying to tell him? That she
regretted
not being a witch? How could
she
want to be like them?

“Mother,” he began hesitantly. “I can appreciate your concern for those . women . who live in the Old Place since they’re distantly related to you. But they’re
distantly
related.”

“To me,” Elinore replied. “But not so distant to you.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then looked at him. “The youngest of them is your half sister, one of your father’s bastards. She’s four years younger than you, and she’s not distant, Liam. She is family.”

“No!” Unable to sit anymore, Liam restlessly prowled the room. As he passed the table, he snatched up the decanter, splashed some whiskey into a glass, and downed it. He poured another two fingers into the glass, but, this time, resisted the urge to gulp it down.

“No,” he said again as he continued to prowl around the room. “She’s no more family than any of the other bastards my father seeded in the women he seduced. I know you established a fund to help those women and assist the
children in learning a trade so that they could have a living, but they’ve never been acknowledged as
family”