Shining Threads (41 page)

Nicky Longworth remarked to Johnny Taylor as they discussed it over a bottle of his father’s best claret that there really could have been nothing in the rumour that had circulated some
time ago that Tessa Harrison and Robby Atherton were to be married. And if there had been she’d damned soon recovered from it. Most women went into a decline when they were jilted but there
was no sign of it about Tessa. What a splendid creature she was and if she weren’t so firmly attached to that lucky cousin of hers he wouldn’t mind giving her a whirl himself.

At the start of the hunting season, when he had been home for six months, they rode over to Longworth Hall. She was dressed in the superb outfit which had been made for her by Miss Maymon and
which had caused such a commotion last season, a magnificent study in black and white. But for the high swell of her breasts, she and her cousin might have been the two brothers, one of whom lay in
his grave at Scutari.

She was instantly surrounded by admiring gentlemen the moment she put her booted and spurred foot to the ground and none of them noticed the ominous clenching of Drew Greenwood’s jaw. She
was breathless with laughter, swaggering amongst the men, one of them, it seemed, as she accepted a glass of punch. She was completely at home in their company, unaware, as indeed were they, of any
gulf between them. She had been welcomed here, despite her commercial background, from an early age. She had dined, with her cousins, in the medieval great hall, had watched them play wild games,
and even joined in on occasion, down the long gallery lined with ancestral Longworth portraits. She had danced with them at their last Christmas party before Drew and Pearce rode away and dreamed
here in the arms of her love, before the great darkness had fallen in on her. Now, it was as though she had come home.

‘Tessa.’

His voice was like a whip, snapping about her and the group of laughing men. They all turned, their faces still wreathed in merriment, their eyes glowing with that particular look gentlemen
bestow on a pretty woman, especially if she is as spirited as Tessa Harrison. He could see it in their eyes, that slight hint of coarseness only another man will recognise, a look of speculation as
these boisterous and brash young gentlemen eyed the long and lovely body of his cousin.

‘It’s time we were mounted,’ he said harshly. His voice sounded strange even to himself for he could not bear, simply could not bear her even to speak to these men who were
clustered about her. He was eaten up with jealousy and had not the least idea how to cope with it. She must come to him, she must come at once, his arrogant manner said, or he honestly thought he
might break down in some way. His legs which had so easily swung him on, and then off his new bay were rigid with the necessity of keeping himself upright. But at the same time he could feel that
familiar snapping rage, that savage temper, the Greenwood temper, the Chapman temper, he had been told, that had been his mother’s, begin to race through him.
She was his.
Tessa
Harrison had belonged exclusively to Drew Greenwood for the past six months. She had folded herself in all but the physical sense about his wounded soul and body and had begun the process of
healing within him.

She knew, of course. Though he said nothing more and they were all looking at him in amazement – for had not Drew Greenwood always been the most amiable of fellows, except in a fight?
– she knew, and miraculously she put her glass in the nearest hand and came to him.

‘I’m ready, cousin, if you are.’

That night, just as though the terror he had lived in for several minutes that day had awakened the sleeping beast of his nightmare, he screamed for her, calling her by name, urgently, though he
still slept.

Jenny Harrison stood by the door of his bedroom watching the now familiar scene as Tessa rocked him against her breast. Laurel was at her back, and Charlie, and over Laurel’s head their
eyes met in understanding. Jenny closed the door quietly.

‘You’re not going to leave them there alone?’ Laurel was aghast, genuinely shocked by her aunt’s attitude towards something which was not at all proper. Both Drew and
Tessa were in their nightclothes, almost lying together on the bed, and how could Jenny Harrison countenance such a thing, turn a blind eye to what was becoming a scandal in the Penfold Valley? It
must be stopped, this gossip which was on everyone’s lips and which might affect her own standing in the community. It must be put an end to, preferably, in Laurel’s opinion, by sending
Tessa to her own mother and father in Italy for a few months until it had died down, and returning Drew to the mill where he belonged. This attachment between her brother and her cousin had begun
to frighten her as she recognised its potential for dislodging her from her present position as mistress of this house. One day, of course, Drew would marry, some shy, submissive sixteen-year-old
who would be safely and easily managed by someone as proficient as herself. But if she and Tessa, who was headstrong and wilful, were bound together in the running of Greenacres, how could Laurel
possibly retain the control which had been hers for so many pleasant years?

‘Well, you might be able to overlook such behaviour, Aunt Jenny, but I certainly cannot, not under my own roof with innocent children sleeping in their beds not a dozen yards
away.’

With a crash she flung open the door, her hand which held the doorknob losing its grip so that the door hit the wall violently. A draught of air eddied in with her, lifting the lace curtains at
the open window, whispering about the quiet room and making the flame of the candle dance and flicker, casting dreadful shadows on the ceiling and walls. Before Jenny could stop her, or even catch
her breath to speak, Laurel strode into the room, her small figure casting a huge shadow.

Drew had begun to move slowly away from the horror of the bodies which clutched at his own, from the weight which he knew was his brother Pearce, his brother who had no feet, indeed no legs;
away from the tortured screams of men and horses and into the warm, scented presence of the woman whom he knew would be there, ready to welcome him back. His breathing had slowed to a peaceful
calm, his turbulent body becoming quiet, and he sighed thankfully. He did not awaken, merely moved from one level of sleep to another, from the nightmare into the state of dreamless peace she
brought him.

He awoke to confusion: to wildly dancing shadows, huge and distorted, to harsh cries and angry voices. There were people struggling. He did not know who they were in that first awareness and for
a few moments he floundered, ready to call out to Pearce to come and give him a hand, or to Tessa to gather him into her arms; one of them, either would do, to be there for him, as there had always
been someone. He struggled to sit up, to make some sense of it and he felt a calming hand on his shoulder, hers, and in that moment he knew what he must do to make himself complete again, secure
again.

‘What the devil’s going on?’ He was ready to leap from his bed though he had on only a nightshirt, and casting modesty to the wind he threw back the bedclothes and stood up.
Charlie, incredibly, was struggling with Laurel who was beseeching his Aunt Jenny – dear God, it was like a bloody circus – to do something before the good name of the family was
completely ruined. It would be best, really it would, she cried, if Tessa went to Italy – couldn’t she see it? – and later, when Drew was settled in the mill, perhaps with some
suitable young lady, Tessa could come back and . . .

‘For God’s sake, Mother, will you tell her to be quiet before I smack her silly face?’ Tessa was furious, ‘How dare she come in here with her vile insinuations, upsetting
Drew . . .’

‘I’m not upset,’ he said and he meant it. For the first time since he and Pearce had left this house two years ago he felt filled with well-being, eager to fight with anyone
who cared to take him on. He had no idea what was happening. He knew he had been dreaming, well, having one of his nightmares, and that for an awful moment his dream world had followed him from
sleep, creating a fog of swirling shadows about his bed. Now he saw it was only Aunt Jenny, patient and enduring, Laurel and Charlie having some kind of argument, familiar and everyday . . . and
Tessa.

‘You won’t be satisfied until you have driven us all to the point of madness with your stupid and quite unbelievable implications, will you?’ Tessa was shouting. ‘Have
you no humanity in that self-centred mind of yours, or does the whole universe begin and end with what you consider proper? You listen to those feather-brained friends of yours who have nothing
better to do than gossip over their teacups, ruining reputations with as much compunction as swatting a fly. Dream it up, if it does not exist, as you have decided to dream up this fantasy that
Drew and I are . . . well, whatever that nasty mind of yours . . .’

‘Charlie, are you going to let this niece of yours insult . . . ?’

‘Insult? That is where
your
talents lie, Laurel, that and your gift for seeing villainy where there is none . . .’

‘I really believe you are quite mad, Tessa,’ Laurel said coolly, raising a fastidious eyebrow. She had decided, it appeared, to treat Tessa’s outburst with the disdain one
shows to a child in a tantrum. Her husband’s reluctance to support her in this was really unforgivable and she would not forgive him, nor Tessa, her manner said. It was not in her nature to
brawl like a fish-wife, particularly with the servants within earshot, as they were certain to be. But Tessa, driven at last to lose the patience and temper she had sworn to keep under control at
least in Drew’s presence, had no such compunction.

‘I must be to have lived in the same house as you for nearly twenty years, and if I am you have driven me to it with your double-faced, double-tongued hypocrisy . . .’

‘How dare you.’ Laurel was white-faced, her eyes pure green slits of outrage but still her training as a lady, which Tessa surely was not, held her in check.

‘Tessa, I will not have this,’ Jenny said, trying to signal to Charlie to get his wife out of the room. ‘It cannot be good for Drew and it certainly makes me feel . .
.’

‘. . . and if you think I shall allow you to . . .’

‘
Tessa
, that is enough.’ Her mother’s voice was like a pistol shot for though Tessa was perhaps only voicing Jenny’s own thoughts it did no good, none at all, to
bring them to light now. Not now.

‘Thank you, Aunt Jenny. She really does deserve a good thrashing and if she were mine she would have one.’

‘That is for me to say, Laurel, not you.’

‘A baggage such as she is deserves . . .’

‘And what does that mean, Laurel Greenwood? What are you implying now, pray? That I stand on street corners like any common . . .’

‘
Tessa!
’

‘I do not imply anything, my girl.’ Laurel was incensed beyond care now, ready to say anything, anything, regardless of the truth: to wound her cousin in any way she could, and the
more painful it was the better. ‘Dear God, it is no more than two years since you were disporting yourself all over the valley with that gentleman, if one can call him that, from the
fox-hunting set of the Squire’s. God alone knows what you got up to with him but whatever it was, it surely must have escaped no one’s notice that he did not offer marriage. Really,
Tessa, one can only hope that there is someone somewhere who has not heard of your reputation since the likelihood of your marrying seems very remote.’

The silence which followed was like the endlessly grey, endlessly deep waters of the lake in winter. Small, cruel ripples washed against the stricken girl who drowned in the centre of it. Her
face was as white as her demure lawn nightgown, rigid, clenched with anguish, and she seemed unable to move, to speak, to defend herself. Her fiery temper, the strong and heedless defiance she had
shown had been defeated, blown out like a candle, her vividness quenched, her spirit torn from her.

‘I would be most obliged, Charlie old chap, if you would remove your wife, my sister, from my room.’ Drew’s drawling voice was insolent in its intention to insult. ‘She
really does need taking in hand, you know, and if you have not the backbone to do it, I would be delighted to give her the beating she deserves. One would think a woman of her age – what is
it now, Laurel, thirty-two, thirty-three? – would have learned tact and indeed some common sense. And she is quite mistaken, you know.’

He moved lightly across the space which divided Tessa and himself, turning her to face him. He cupped her face gently with his hands, looking down into the deep, glacial grey of her stricken
eyes. In his was the warm certainty of his intentions.

‘She is quite wrong, my darling,’ he said, heedless of the three people who watched. ‘I have known you and everything there is to know about you from the day you were born and
it would be my joy and my honour to marry you. That is, if you will have me.’ Then he grinned impudently, just as once he had done, his humour and charm concealing from her the urgency with
which he waited for her answer.

They saw the wretchedness leave her. They watched the stiffness, the awful steel-edged tension drain away and with a sigh of thankfulness she simply leaned into the arms which were held out to
her.

20

‘You don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to, lass,’ her mother said to her, her expression one of gentle understanding for only she knew of her
daughter’s anguished love for Robby Atherton. To the rest of the household and community it had been no more than a girlish romance, the short-lived excitement of a gentleman whose curiosity
and attention had been aroused by a pretty girl somewhat beneath his station in life; a restless, spirited girl who should not have been put forward, nor attracted his notice in the first place if
she had been properly brought up. And the whole thing had come to naught, as these things have a way of doing, but leaving Tessa Harrison with a reputation irretrievably tarnished, which was why
this marriage to her cousin was so timely.