Storm (5 page)

"Do you indeed? And why, pray tell?"

"It smells nice. Better than London."

She held him in her lap, cuddled close. "Does it?"

"And the pigs are happy here, Mr. Deverell said. Makes the bacon taste good." Flynn yawned and curled tighter, resting his head on her shoulder. "Where's Reverend Coles?" he murmured.

"He's gone to sleep to dream of Heaven."

"He won't never wake up again?"

"No. When an old person dreams of Heaven they stay there. But he can still watch over us."

"What if I dream of Heaven?"

They'd had this discussion before, but he liked to be reassured, of course. "You're much too young and have a great deal to do here. Only when you can do more good from up there, will you dream of Heaven."

"And sleep forever."

"Yes."

After a moment, he said, "Sing me a song. You haven't sung to me all trip, not since we left London, Ma."

Softly she began to sing one of his favorites:
Kathleen Mavourneen
.

"What does Mavourneen mean again?" he whispered at the end, as he always did.

And Kate replied, as
she
always did, "It means 'my darling'
.
" She planted a quick kiss on his brow, but he was already fast asleep.

Now, at last, a moment alone to observe her surroundings, without worrying about her expression giving her away as a hunted animal.

Above the mantle there was a framed, hand-drawn, detailed map of the area — the only decoration on the wall. Against it rested the envelope that waited for his plowman. Fancy leaving it there where it might be stolen. Leaving his door open to all and sundry, including her!

She'd never met a man so trusting— and artless, if it could be believed that he always spoke his mind.

Yet he was a Deverell and wise, respectable women stayed away from Deverells.

In truth, Kate didn't know what to think of him and she usually had men sewn up fairly quickly upon meeting them for the first time. In his case she was all adrift.

She looked down at her son. Sandy lashes fluttering against his cheeks, the boy slipped into deeper dreams, trusting her arms to keep him safe. As they would, always, of course.

Our house is in that cart
.

Poor soul. She had moved him from one temporary accommodation to another since before he was born. Now he was of an age to want something permanent. She supposed that by clinging to the ragged collection of objects in that cart Flynn was creating a place in which he belonged. A home.

Perhaps her sudden stop today in the river was a sign from the Almighty. Could it be that the Good Lord— and the spirit of Reverend Coles— were telling Kate Kelly it was time she too brought her tired wheels to rest?

Chapter Four

"Sorry I was late, Olivia. Got held up this morning with the lambing." He set the horses into a quick trot as they took the road to Truro. "At least the rain has passed."

"Thank goodness! I feared we'd have a wet day at the market and I have much to buy."

He smiled at her. "Finery for the wedding day, eh?"

"Nonsense," she replied briskly, hooking her arm under his. "You know I don't hold with fuss. I want an unpretentious, plain ceremony, as I told your father."

"And what does he say?"

"That he refuses to skulk around as if I'm ashamed of him for a husband. He wants a large, silly party with all the blessed trimmings. The man is impossible."

"Aye, but you knew that before you agreed to marry him."

Her lips cracked apart in a little smile. "Yes, I did, I must confess. I knew what I was getting into, even before I came here to work for your father."

It was not yet two years since the thrice-widowed Mrs. Olivia Monday arrived at Roscarrock to take on the post as secretary to his father, but to Storm it seemed as if he'd known her much longer. He'd felt a friendly connection with her instantly. His father, in usual bull-headed fashion, had tried to make more of it and push the two of them together at first. Before realizing he was in love with her himself.

"It'll be strange, I suppose," she said, eyeing him coyly, "to have a stepmother who is the same age as you."

He laughed. "I'm sure I'll get used to it. My father is barely sixteen years older than me, remember?" In many ways his father was more like an idolized elder brother. They'd shared many an ale together and even a few women. Not at the same time, of course, whatever rumor alleged. And gossip was plentiful when it came to True Deverell and his "litter".

Storm's father did not live by many rules, but he had one he followed strictly; he never explained, excused or felt the need to defend his behavior, which was all well and good, but meant that a vast deal of unsavory gossip went unchecked.

"Don't waste your time," he would say with a shrug. "Those who have no excitement or success in their lives must always talk about, judge and criticize someone who does."

There was certainly no shortage of "excitement" in the Deverell tribe.

But as Olivia said, she knew what she was getting into, and fortunately she didn't try to change Storm's father, but loved him exactly the way he was, faults and all.

When she recently came into a large, unexpected inheritance from her maternal grandmother, many locals — those who thought her an opportunist, marrying Deverell for his money—had expected Olivia to pack her trunk and leave. After all, they whispered, why would any respectable woman put up with him if she had her own money and didn't need his?

Olivia stayed, however.

Always primly dressed, and with her own behavior beyond reproach, she defied and irritated the gossips to remain with True Deverell, a man once named "the worst rake of all time". And she was quite content. That's how rare a woman she was.

"What good would that inheritance be to me if I had to live without your father?" she'd said. "I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to spend it without him to advise me. I'd probably take up with a very young, very well-proportioned, not very articulate, Italian sculptor's model who would rob me of every penny in a short amount of time, leaving me destitute and riddled with the pox."

Yes, she had a wry sense of humor that Storm appreciated. But he knew Olivia would never do anything foolish with her money. She was much too sensible and had her head screwed firmly on the right way.

He thought how lucky his father was. Although born a foundling with so many odds against him, True Deverell had rolled some very good dice— literally
and
figuratively. He'd certainly been fortunate to find a woman who could put up with him and all his quirks. A clever, honest woman who genuinely loved him, for all his faults. It was almost enough to make a man believe in "happily ever after". Almost.

"Despite the fact that I want no fanfare, I would like to see you in a well-made coat — a handsome cutaway perhaps—at the wedding," she said firmly. "After all, you are your father's eldest son."

He winced. Happy as he was for his father and Olivia, he wished he might retreat into the background on the big day and not be forced into fancy, uncomfortable clothes that he was unlikely to wear again. He never took much pleasure in social events, usually felt awkward and out of place.

"You can be measured today at the tailors. There's no time to send away to London, but Mr. Thrupp in Truro is very good, so I hear. What about clean evening clothes for dinner at Roscarrock when everybody comes down for the wedding?"

"It's only family. I'm sure my old buckskins will suffice."

"Your father wants you to make an effort. You know how he is.
Clothes make the man
, as he likes to say."

Storm began to suspect this trip to Truro was really planned to buy him new clothes after all and that Olivia had merely tricked him into coming by pretending she needed his assistance. "My father never used to care. He always said it didn't matter what people thought of us."

"However, he has grown up to appreciate two things, an education and the cut of a good coat." Apparently, she mistook his heavy sigh for weariness. "You work too hard, Storm. I've told you before, it'll age you before your time if you don't find a nice girl to look after you and give you cause to stay home once in a while."

"I've got girls to play with when I fancy 'em." He smirked, looking away down the road. "Nice
and
naughty."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!" After a pause, she added, "It's not all about
that
."

Storm cast her a doubtful, sideways glance. "What else could it be about? It's what women were made for."

"Now you sound like your father."

"Who else should I sound like?"

She laughed, shaking her head.

Staring at the road ahead, Storm thought of what his father called, "The Spark". It was the primal heat of attraction that sometimes happened between a man and a woman. Storm had experienced that spark before— or so he thought. Today, however, he realized that all those other times had not happened for him the way his father meant. Those sparks fizzled out easily and could not compare with what happened to him today.

This morning it was very different. He was still suffering from the result, feeling a little singed.

"Tomorrow is the estate sale at the Putnam farm, is it not?" Olivia asked.

"Hmm." His mind reluctantly forced back from a pair of rose-embroidered stockings, he grumbled, "Joss Restarick stopped in this morning to let me know he means to bid on the land too."

"But your father said you have plans for it."

He nodded. "It's a fine, sheltered spot with good soil. A nice little orchard on the property too. And the buildings are sound, perfect to house more stock." Storm wouldn't tell anyone why he really wanted that farm. Best not let word get out. So he gave the usual answer. "Old Steadfast Putnam built those stone walls with his own hands when he was a young man. I'm sure you've heard how particular he was. He knew stone like no one else."

"Such a pity he and his wife had no children to inherit the property. They married later in life, I understand. Steadfast Putnam was as resistant to marriage as you are, it seems. He left it too late, sadly, to have offspring."

Ignoring that broad hint, he said, "I'll make good use of the place and make it pay. The old man couldn't work the land as much these last five or so years and he was too stubborn to get help in. I offered, many a time, to go over and lend him a plow for those two fields, but he'd have none of it. Accused me once of wanting to ‘poke about’ on his land. Fair tore me apart to see those fields left idle. He let his pride get in the way of sound business sense."

"Sometimes pride is all a man has left."

"I'm not surprised it's all he had, since he was a mean old bugger with no mind for looking to the future. "

"One shouldn't speak ill of the dead." She shot him a sly sideways glance. "Besides,
pride
has been something of a failing in your family too from time to time."

"Can't think what you mean, stepmother." He squared his shoulders and added briskly, "There's few folk so humble as I."

"Yes, of course. This would be the insufferable
humility
that leads you to endure excessive self-confidence, generally ignore advice and always think you know best."

He sniffed. "As a matter of fact, I
have
taken your advice recently, you'll be pleased to know."

"You have? Gracious!"

"I decided to hire a housekeeper and wrote to Reverend Coles, as you suggested."

Her eyes widened and she held her hat with one hand as he quickened the horses. "I'm very glad. Now you will have someone to keep you in line."

"Hmm."

"I look forward to meeting her. What is she like?"

"Very... proper."

"Then I hope you are polite to her."

"As long as she's polite to me," he muttered.

"She has good references?"

"Not a one." Storm couldn't help himself. Olivia's disapproving countenance was always amusing to see and he'd been on the receiving end of it a great deal. One look at that expression reassured him that he wasn't losing his touch.

"Why would Reverend Coles send you a woman with no references?"

"Perhaps she was the best he could get to work for a filthy rotten Deverell."

"Nonsense, I'm sure you're paying a very good wage. Like your father, you've always thrown money about as if it cures all." She shook her head, tut-tutting under her breath, adding to his amusement. "She can cook at least?"

"Apparently not. Can't sew either."

"Storm! You should have let me interview her."

He swiftly changed the subject. "I hear father's making some alterations at Roscarrock."

She huffed, still shaking her head. "Just adding a few modern comforts."

He nodded. "Good. It's time the place was dragged out of the dark ages. I know he liked the grimness of it because he thought it suited his image."

After a while she said, "When I first came to Roscarrock, I found it a drafty place, isolated and dark. Now I've developed such a fondness for that ugly old stone castle that I would never want to live anywhere else." She squeezed his arm. "Strange how finding love can transform everything. It's not nearly so eerie and gloomy now that your father and I are there together every evening."

He snorted. "Isn't that romantic."

"Yes it is. Very. And you'll know how lovely it is too, Master Skeptic, when you have a family of your own to come home to."

"I was hoping you and my father would give up trying to get me shackled by now."

"Certainly not," she replied smugly.

No, he thought, that had been wishful thinking. His father's efforts to find him a wife had never been subtle, and now that he was in the throes of hapless love himself, there was no end to True Deverell's determined chipping away at his eldest son's peaceful, contented bachelor existence.

"You have a rather somber expression on your face suddenly," said Olivia.

"I was thinking of my mother. This time of year always brings the memory closer."

"Of course." She plucked a dandelion seed off his sleeve and watched it float away in the wind. "The snowdrops were beautiful on her grave this year."

"Yes. I'm glad I planted them there. She always loved the first signs of spring."

Storm had spent much of his youth looking after his mother, and it didn't end with her death. When he was ten, standing by her grave, worrying that she might be cold that night, he'd decided to plant snowdrops there, knowing they would bloom into a soft white fleece to cover her. Each year since then he'd planted a few more. Twenty years later his mother's grave had a blanket of flowers every spring.

"She would be very proud of you," Olivia said softly. "To see all that you've achieved."

He lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

"Since you took the farm over and expanded your holdings you've turned an excellent profit every year."

But he wasn't always the good boy of the family. Storm used to raise his fists to any man who looked at him the wrong way, and he'd had to work hard to get his rage under control. Olivia knew none of that and she refused to listen to gossip. To her he had always been the cheerful, easy-going fellow, the calm one in the family.

"To ignore your success is very un-Deverell like," she added.

He sighed. "There's a lot about me that's un-Deverell like."

Ransom— the half-brother next to him in age, but still six years younger— had once said, "You're too soft-hearted to be one of us. I daresay it will come to light one day that your father was the boar-walker. Even you must admit it's a very strange coincidence that big-bosomed Louisa, the gamekeeper's daughter, didn't hold True Deverell accountable for siring her bastard until she saw that he'd made a tidy fortune in the years since he tupped her on a haystack. She didn't crawl out of the woodwork to make trouble until he had married our mother, Lady Charlotte."