Three Little Secrets (28 page)

“Oh, Geoff!” On impulse, she bent forward, and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. “To him, you are perfectly normal. And he is very proud of you. Both of us are very proud of you.”

Geoff seemed to consider it. “I like Mr. MacLachlan very much,” he said. “He knows a lot of interesting things. Do you think he will mind being my father?”

“Oh, Geoff, no,” she said, swiftly covering his hand with hers. “Indeed, if anything, he thinks that I am to blame—”

A sharp knock at the door made Madeleine almost leap from her skin.

Merrick stuck his head into the room. A look of acute discomfort passed over his face. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I wished to say good night to Geoff.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” After another swift kiss to Geoffrey’s cheek, Madeleine leapt from the bed. “I shall leave you to it. Good night, my dear. Remember to clean your teeth, please.”

Merrick came in reluctantly, then hesitated, seizing her wrist as she passed. “You have been crying.” It was not a question.

Madeleine gave another pathetic laugh, and dabbed beneath her eyes with the back of one hand. “Only a little.” Her face fell yet again. “Merrick, I…I have done as you wished. I have told him.”

Shock flitted across his face. Madeleine jerked her wrist from his grasp and hastened across the room. She could feel Merrick’s eyes boring into her back, but she dared not turn around for fear of what she might say or do.

A pennywecht o’ love
is worth a pound o’ law.

S
he made her way through the old castle and to her bedchamber in haste. Eliza was still at work when she entered. Madeleine’s night things had already been laid out on the bed, and the maid was now organizing the contents of her dressing case on the dainty toilet table.

“Good evening, ma’am.” Then she looked up, and her smile faded. “Oh, my lady. What has happened?”

Madeleine looked at the nightclothes, then looked longingly at the wardrobe, which stood open. Her cloak was hanging from a peg on the door. “Well, I have done it, Eliza,” she said, going to the wardrobe for the cloak. “I have told Geoff the truth.”

Eliza cut a strange, sidelong look at her. “Told him what truth, ma’am, exactly?”

Madeleine exhaled a deep breath. “That Mr. MacLachlan is his real father,” she answered.

In all the years they had been together, she and Eliza had never really spoken of it. It had not been necessary; a healthy, eight-pound babe delivered far from home scarcely six months after one’s wedding day could mean but one thing.

“I realize, Eliza, that you have long known the truth,” said Madeleine, folding the cloak over her arm. “And now Geoff knows it. He has the right, do you not think, to know his father?”

At last, Eliza looked up. “Aye, perhaps,” she said, “but does Mr. MacLachlan deserve the child?”

Lamely, Madeleine lifted her shoulders. “I think, Eliza, that he truly does,” she said quietly. “And I think it was wrong of me to leave him all those years ago.”

Eliza bristled. “With all respect, my lady, it’s not like you went willingly,” she answered. “No one remembers so well as I those weeks you lay ill, half-hysterical with grief, unable to eat nor sleep. ’Tis a wonder you carried the child at all. And why did he not come for you if he truly wished to be your husband?”

Eliza’s words brought back some horrible memories. “Apparently, he was not able to come for me,” Madeleine whispered. “He…he was injured. My father’s doing, I collect.”

“Injured?” said the maid skeptically.

“Yes, very badly, I collect,” Madeleine said. “I begin to wonder…yes, I begin to wonder if that was not my father’s intent. To leave me a young widow. I have not learnt the details, but I mean to have them soon enough. In any case, when he was well again, he—well, he chose not to pursue me. It was his pride, I daresay.”

Eliza’s gaze fell to the open dressing case in the chair. “Well, I have never liked him, ma’am,” she admitted quietly. “In the village, they say he
is
prideful, and that he bankrupts men for sport—or so Mrs. Drexel heard. And that he’s rich as Croesus, too, and owed money by half the
ton,
who live in fear he’ll come to collect it, for most of ’em haven’t a pot to piss in—begging your pardon, ma’am.”

“Well, they haven’t,” Madeleine agreed with a muted smile. “So perhaps they are merely envious?”

Eliza looked a little ashamed. “Well, I wondered at that, too,” she admitted. “For Mr. Phipps speaks ever so highly of him.”

“Does he indeed?”

Eliza nodded. “Oh, he admits Mr. MacLachlan is a hard man, and a bitter one, too. But honest, he says. Very honest, and fair to the people who work for him. But ruthless with anyone who crosses him.” She lifted her head and caught Madeleine’s eyes. “Still, I suppose that is all one can ask, don’t you think, ma’am? That he be honest? I suppose he would make a good father for a boy who had none?”

Madeleine managed to nod. “I am sure of it, Eliza,” she said. “I would never risk Geoff’s happiness. Do not worry about what other people say. Now I am going out for a walk around that lovely loch. Otherwise, I think I shall go mad. I want you to go upstairs to bed, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “You will be careful, my lady, will you not?”

“Yes, thank you.” Madeleine nodded. “But the moon is bright. I shall be perfectly safe.”

The maid was halfway to the door when Madeleine stopped her. “Eliza, one last question, if I may?”

“Yes, ma’am?” She turned.

“You spoke some weeks back about Florette,” Madeleine began. “Did you—did you know anything, Eliza, that you did not tell me?”

Eliza’s eyes flared with alarm. “No, ma’am,” she said. “I told all I knew—for a fact, I mean.”

Madeleine narrowed her gaze. “What does that mean, ‘for a fact’?”

Eliza shrugged innocently. “Well, ’twas said she wrote to the master, ma’am,” said the maid. “And Aunt Esther said that after a time, the master became quite put out over it.”

“How many times, Eliza?” Madeleine demanded. “How often? And where?”

She shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am,” she confessed. “Well—to London, I reckon? Aunt Esther said that Mr. Trout—that was the London butler, you’ll recall—anyways, Trout used to say that the master would turn dark as a thunderhead when her letters came and go about in an ill mood for days after.”

“I see.”

Eliza looked a little sheepish. “And Aunt Esther took it into her head, ma’am, that the master was sending the girl money,” she admitted. “Why she thought that, I cannot say, but she was never one to make things up.”

Madeleine frowned. “I think I know why. I think…I think Florette was helping Father. And later, possibly blackmailing him.”

“Blackmail, ma’am?” But Eliza did not seem surprised.

Madeleine considered it. She had barely known Florette. The girl had been hired by her aunt after Madeleine’s arrival in London, for her father had insisted that a French maid would lend Madeleine a sense of style.

Madeleine did not think Florette had started out as a spy. She had been far too complicit in Madeleine’s romance with Merrick for that to have been the case. But faced with the possibility of being turned off without a reference, no doubt it had been all too easy for the girl to become a turncoat.

“Eliza, did you ever hear anyone call Florette ‘Flora’?”

The maid shook her head. “No, ma’am. But they’re the same, aren’t they? One French, the other English?”

Slowly, Madeleine nodded. “More or less,” she agreed. “I think Florette stayed behind in Gretna Green. When I asked for her, my father told me he had turned her off. But I think he lied. I think he left her there to spy on Mr. MacLachlan, and…and to do other wickedness, too.”

“Oh, that I do not doubt,” grumbled Eliza. “Always looking out for herself, that one was.”

“And yet I found nothing from Florette in Papa’s correspondence,” Madeleine mused. “Indeed, I found nothing at all about me, or my…well, my strange situation.”

“Well, begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Eliza. “But if you didn’t find those things in his files—things you
know
existed—then perhaps they weren’t there for a reason.”

Madeleine managed a weak smile. “Yes, I fear you are right,” she murmured. “Thank you, Eliza, for your candor.”

With her cloak still over her arm, Madeleine made her way back through the twisting corridors and down to the castle’s forecourt. The front door was unlocked, the stone courtyard awash in moonlight. Soon Madeleine was standing a good distance along the shore, and looking up at the back of the castle.

Lady Annis’s rooms in the tower were easily identified; lamplight still shone from the high, narrow windows. Her own room she could see, and Geoff’s—well, that was less certain, for all the lights were out on that side. Fleetingly, she wondered which bedchamber was Merrick’s. But that was really none of her business, was it? She had long ago forfeited her rights to his life’s details.

Madeleine tossed the light cloak about her shoulders and set off along the loch’s even shoreline. Give her odd, restless mood tonight, sleep was unlikely. Far better to take in the cool evening air and hope that it would soothe her. She realized that her relationship with Merrick was damaged, perhaps irreparably. She hoped she had not just done a similar damage to Geoff. It occurred to her belatedly that it might have been unwise for her to leave the boy alone with his father so soon. She had lobbed an emotional mortar shell into a twelve-year-old child’s life, then left him to deal with the aftermath.

No. No, it was not so dire as all that. Merrick would know what to say to Geoff. Whatever his failings as a husband, he was going to be a good father. She knew it with a mother’s instinct. Perhaps he did not yet love Geoff as she did, but he valued the boy on a level so deep she could not but respect it. He had set aside the most important thing in his life—his beloved business—to bring the child on this long journey. No man did that lightly, and she had a feeling Merrick had done it far less lightly than most.

She stood almost directly opposite the little island now; it was easy to make it out in the shimmering moonlight. On the path up ahead there was something like a little boathouse—just a shed, really, with a planked pier which ran out into the water for a few feet on tall, rickety pilings. Madeleine made her way to it, and stepped lightly onto the planking. It felt perfectly sound. Gingerly, she walked its length, and feeling not so much as a quiver, sat down in the pool of moonlight at the very end. Then she set her forehead to her knees and bawled like a newborn calf.

Between those great, gasping sobs, Madeleine tried to figure out just what it was she cried for. For the first time in years, she had begun to feel there was a hope for Geoff’s happiness. No one here had treated her with true unkindness, not even Sir Alasdair. Merrick had been civil, even a little protective whilst they had been with his grandmother. Life could have been—indeed, often
had
been—so much worse.

But the truth was, Madeleine was beginning to understand that a place in Geoff’s life must be carved out for Merrick. She would be faced with seeing the man on a regular, if not frequent, basis. Suddenly, the loneliness and the aching sense of grief all washed over her again, drowning her in sorrow. Dear God, what had she done? And was there any possible way of undoing it?

She gave in to the tears for a good ten minutes, then forced herself to stop. It was a little survival mechanism which she had learned long ago: have a good, long cry, then get up and get on about the business of life. No one ever died from unrequited love. She had lived better than a dozen years in just such a state. She withdrew her handkerchief and summarily dried her tears, then knelt to dip it into the loch so that she might bathe her face. The water was shockingly cold but wonderfully refreshing to her hot, tear-stained cheeks.

Suddenly, a little bump beneath her recalled Madeleine to the present. She looked down to see that a boat—well, something remotely like a boat—was moored to the little pier below, and it was this which had bumped against the front piling. She set her head to one side and studied it. It was a raft, she thought. Or some sort of large, flat punt? Two impossibly long poles lay tied along one side. But where would one go in such a thing? She looked up, and straight ahead.

To the island.

The island was just large enough for a picnic on a leisurely afternoon. Fleetingly, she considered it, then cast the thought away at once. She really did not know how to use such a contraption. Most likely she would drift about in the loch all night, or drown herself trying to get out. And then where would Geoff be? He would have a new father and no mother. She gave a hysterical little laugh and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

It was then that she saw the light. Not some eerie specter across the water, but a yellow shimmer approaching from behind the boathouse.

“Madeleine?” Merrick’s whisper came out of gloom. “Madeleine! What are you doing out here?”

She turned, deftly moving her skirts. “I might ask the same of you,” she said, as he strode the length of the little pier.

He hung his lantern from one of the pilings. “Geoff and I saw you go out,” he explained. “I was concerned. The loch can be more treacherous than it looks.”

“Have I a pair of spies on my heels, then?”

He gave a muted smile but did not look her in the eyes. “We were at the window with the lamp out,” he said quietly. “We were studying the night sky.”

Madeleine smiled up at him. “Geoff has an insatiable interest in astronomy,” she warned. “If you know anything at all of the constellations, he will pepper you with questions.”

He knelt beside her and set one knee to the planking. “I could show him little tonight,” he confessed. “The moonlight makes it impossible.”

Madeleine looked up at it. “It will soon be full, will it not?”

He shrugged and set one hand on his thigh—a thigh which was encased in the elegant, well-cut trousers he had worn to dinner. “A day or two past, I think.”

He studied the moon quietly for a moment, his eyes narrowed as if he watched instead the sun.

“How did you find Geoff?” She blurted out the words too fast, anxious to fill the silence.

“Well enough. A little confused, perhaps. And tired from all the travel.”

“He is not…oh, I don’t know! Angry with me?”

Merrick shook his head. “He accepts life’s vagaries much as my grandmother does,” he said. “Nothing ever really surprises them, you know. It is a part of…of how they are.”

Madeleine sighed. “He said he knew I’d been keeping something from him,” she admitted. “And that it was about him. But he wondered if it was ‘something bad,’ whatever that means.”

“They can sense dishonesty, you know,” he said. “No—I’m sorry—that was a poor choice of words. They can sense
dissemblance.
And half-truths. They…they
know
things. I tell you, Madeleine, it can be uncanny.”

“ ‘They,’ meaning people like Lady Annis and Geoff?” she suggested. “Two months past, you could not have convinced me of that.”

“And now?

In the moonlight, she watched him. His eyes still had not met hers. “I…I believe it,” she whispered. “I believe in many things now that I’d once thought impossible.”

At last he turned to fully face her. “Was my grandmother right, Maddie?” he rasped, his voice suddenly thick with emotion. “Tell me. Should I…should I have come for you?”

Her eyes widened. “To Italy?”

“To the ends of the bloody earth,” he said. “Were that where you had gone.”