Jack looked over the trees towards the house and both dreaded and longed to find Katherine ensconced within. Just a few minutes in her company, sharing an amusing story or laughing at nothing in particular suddenly seemed like the tonic he needed. Then he told himself that Odette’s intensity and need to have him near her all the time was natural due to what she was going through with regard to her father’s precarious health.
“Katherine was everything to me when I’d been abandoned and had no one.” It was not often he spoke of those early days, but it was as much to explain the strength of feeling he’d developed towards Katherine as a very young child as to answer his mother’s question.
Immediately repentant, he gripped his mother’s hand. “But you and Uncle Rufus took me in when there was no reason in the world you should do that for a boy whose parentage you knew nothing of. I could be the son of criminals, yet you found the goodness in your heart to give me a home.”
“Criminals? Surely you’ve never thought that, Jack!”
“Did it never occur to you, Mama? I thought of it constantly. What if my soul was stained with the blood of my father’s victims and the same blackness was within me, waiting to come out?” He smiled and touched her cheek when she gasped. “Please, don’t look so distressed. No one knows the truth of who left me in a basket in front of the foundling home, but it was only natural for the imaginative boy I was to think the worst.”
“Was it, Jack?”
Again, Jack laughed to lighten the situation. “I didn’t mean to distress you, Mother. But you can see that my confusion about my place in the world meant I was easiest with a friend the same age who did not judge and speculate about what kind of boy I was or the kind of man I’d become. Katherine simply liked to sit up in trees with me and plot devious mischief to avenge herself against George. She was kind and thoughtful, too. Even when I was seven. She knew I was hungry most of the days I was at the foundling home, so she stole from the kitchen on my behalf, though, truth to tell, Cook was more than generous. She’d send me back with a basket of cake or scones to feed the other children.” He smiled. It gave him a warm feeling to recall this rare bright spot of his childhood. Before Eliza and Rufus Patmore had adopted him.
“Ah, Mother, your eyes are moist. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She shook her head. “Please go on, Jack. You were only eighteen when you left to become a man, determined to make your way in the world through your own efforts. I was proud of you then, but I can’t tell you how proud I am of you today. As Odette must be.”
“Odette doesn’t like me to talk of the fact I’m adopted. She’d rather no one knew.”
“She should be proud of you for having become a man of substance through your own efforts.”
“Trade, Mama?”
“The East India Company is hardly trade. It’s what made her father the wealthy man he is today.”
“Ideally, I’d be landed gentry, like Uncle Rufus, and have inherited my pile. Still, it’s not stopped her wanting to be my wife. I was afraid of her reaction when I told her, but it seems she’d set her cap at me long before. It was a shock she digested.” Quickly, before his mother could speak, he changed the subject. “And Katherine will always be my friend, Mother. Early friendship lasts forever. I hope she’ll be happy with Lord Derry. They knew one another before she married Freddy Marwick as he was then.” Jack grinned, remembering those early churnings of adolescent jealousy even though he and Katherine had both discussed the impossibility of their being together. “I disapproved of Marwick and Derry and I told her so, though who was I to offer my opinion? I didn’t think she’d be happy with either. Lord, it was a great blow to hear she’d eloped with Marwick the very day I set sail for the West Indies.”
“You felt…wounded?”
“I know, I know.” He sighed. He certainly didn’t want to be too transparent, yet talking about it made him realise how much it had rankled. “I had no right to feel anything, did I? Just as I have no right to feel anything now that she’s soon to wed Lord Derry, from all accounts.”
“Of course not, as you have been betrothed to Odette for the past six months,” his mother said pointedly.
It was the salutary rem
inder he needed, and briskly, he nodded, patting her on the arm as he said, “Indeed I am. And soon I will be the happiest husband in England.”
He wished his mother hadn’t looked with such doubt upon him as she responded, “I hope so, Jack. I truly hope so.”
For it simply reinforced his own doubts about this marriage, and the knowledge there was no way out now.
But why that should trouble him, he had no idea. He repeated the old mantra silently. Odette was the ideal wife: pretty, lively, loving. Yes, devoted. Sometimes, he felt, too devoted.
Chapter 21
Fanny looked up in surprise as the drawing room door was thrust open and her friend, who’d left not long beforehand, returned from her walk, saying, “Katherine’s not here, is she? No? That’s good.”
“My dear Eliza, what is it? You look quite discomposed, which is not at all like you.”
Concerned, Fanny rose and plumped up a cushion on the chair opposite her before deciding it was as good a time as any for a glass of something more fortifying than tea.
“This morning, you may have noticed, I was suddenly deeply unsettled by an unexpected discovery, and when I took Diana for a walk in order to prove that my suspicions were groundless, I met Jack, who only confirmed them.” Eliza fanned herself while waving away the claret that Fanny had poured.
“Eliza, you’re talking in riddles!”
Fanny wished her brother Bertram hadn’t chosen that moment to enter the room. Eliza had been about to divulge something of great importance, but she’d hardly do that with her indiscreet and bumbling brother in attendance.
“Oh, I’ll have Eliza’s if she doesn’t want it.” Bertram plucked the glass from Fanny’s hand and went to lean against the mantelpiece. As usual, his collar was too high and stiff—Bertram thought it made him look important—and his checked trousers on the garish side. Bertram had always embraced fashion as if he couldn’t decide whether he was a gentleman or wanted to join the theatre. “So, what was this you were telling my sisters about your unsettling discovery, Eliza? It’s about Katherine, eh? You’ve heard the rumours, then? Been swirling around for years only seems I was the last to know. In fact, it was only when I stumbled upon it first hand, written in ink for all the world to see, that anyone spilled the beans. Small fry it was, though, compared to the other biz that’s going on these days. Long time ago, besides.”