“But I did return home.” Lucy’s pleas that her brother protect her from a harsh and violent father had coincided with Hamish’s own heartbreak. His first heartbreak. He didn’t want to think too much on which was the reason that most influenced him, though of course he wanted to believe that it was the nobler—his concerns for Lucy.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It was because you are too good to see someone you care for come to harm. I know you came home for me.”
His breath left him in an exhalation of guilt. Lucy was seeing the very best in him when he wasn’t sure he deserved it.
He’d been barely older than his sister when he’d become passionately involved in a love affair with a Frenchwoman, a deserted farmer’s wife who had employed him before her jealous husband had returned and beaten his wife for her faithlessness.
Madeleine was long dead, now, but her spirit was often with him. A distraught Hamish had left the district, and he heard she’d died of a fever shortly afterwards. Now Lucy’s words needled him.
Hamish hadn’t come home for his sister. He’d come home because there was nothing left for him in France.
Because he’d been young, and naïve, and unable to help the woman he loved.
“Yes, you returned home, sad and changed.” Lucy’s expression was so full of sympathy it tugged at his conscience when she added, “Whatever happened in France—and I always suspected it was because you fell in love—made you bitter, and too ready to agree to Father’s proposal that you take over the magazine, with Father retaining full editorial control.” She gave an eloquent shrug. “That’s not like you, Hamish! To bow down to Father without a fight.”
Hamish blinked. Is that how she saw the matter? Did it appear to her, like that, in such simplistic terms?
He pushed back his chair. “We all make decisions based on what seems best at the time. I’m sorry, Lucy.” He pulled back her chair for her. “But at least you share a roof with me, and not Father, now.”
“I’d have run away a long time ago if that were not the case.” She glanced up at him as he escorted her to the door. “Will I still have a place under your roof if I have not made a match before you, Hamish?”
He started. “Good lord, what makes you think I’ll make a match anytime soon?”
“I think your heart is engaged. I think you’d like to marry Mrs Eustace. There, I said it.” She looked triumphant. “She’s a beautiful widow, and the two of you clearly like one another very much. What’s
stopping you from being happy? I hope it’s not guilt, or some misguided romantic notion that you must be forever loyal to your long-lost French love.”
He was glad she didn’t see his face before she left him.
Otherwise she’d have read guilt written all over it, as clearly as she thought she’d correctly read the situation between their father and himself.
* * *
His visit to his father was as predictable as he’d expected. He was lambasted for allowing the tone of the publication to drop by printing the photograph Lucy and Archie had pressed him to publish.
Mrs Eustace, the spiritualist.
“Look at her! Temptress! Charlatan! And to think this filth ousted Reverend Snell’s Talk at the Temperance Society’s monthly meeting. You are a weak-minded young man if you think you know better than I do how this magazine should be run.” His father had tried to rise, but his legs would not support him and, in frustration, he’d snatched up his walking stick and flung it at Hamish.
It reminded Hamish of why he’d made a bad bargain to keep Lucy safe under his own roof.
“I don’t want to see any more wasted inches of print devoted to this woman. Or any spiritualist.”
“With due respect, Father, the public are interested. Other magazines have covered the story of Bernard Renquist’s disappearance. Furthermore, Lord Lambton’s séances to speak to his dead daughter are well attended. There’s supposedly not a dry eye in the room.”
“You’ve been to them, have you?”
Hamish shook his head.
“Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. Lambton has always been a tough nut to crack. Not a man I’d want to cross in business and not a fond parent. Well, if you want a story, go and print one about his crocodile tears. That’s an order! Do you hear? Go and reveal that Eustace woman for the fraud she is. And old Lambton’s tears for the glycerine water they no doubt are!”
Chapter 24
For weeks Hamish had resisted, but now he was here. In Mrs Moore’s parlour, attending a séance on his father’s orders.
On his right sat Lucy, her eyes aglow as she gazed at the audience. Such variety, including a sprinkling of women whom he suspected hailed from Madame Chambon’s.
What would Lily think when she saw him in the front row next to Lucy?