Lady Farquhar's Butterfly Page 6

  As she opened her eyes to face his familiar, inscrutable gaze she realized how important it was to find out. Then the familiar anguish dragged at her soul. What did it matter? Unless she were prepared to publicly declare her child a bastard there could be no future with Max.

  ‘Trust me with your future, Olivia.’ His smile over the top of his china cup was sympathetic; as if he understood her suffering and was offering himself to her as a great gift to lessen her mortal trials. ‘Marry me, and I will reunite you with Julian.’

  Julian.

  Julian, not Max, was the cornerstone of her life. Reclaiming her darling baby was all that mattered and only Nathaniel Kirkman could gain him for her, for she had not the courage to travel an alternate path. Nathaniel’s will was too powerful. He handed her his lawn, laceedged handkerchief. She had not known she was crying; and again he mistook its cause.

  ‘Under my tutelage you shall learn to subjugate your wanton impulses.

  Through me you shall tread a Godly path and find comfort.’ His voice grew honeyed. ‘I have the power to bring you true happiness, Olivia’ – he waited for her to compose herself, for his words to sink in – ‘through your son and humility of spirit. Now my dear, you have not answered me. I have the letter here. Am I to have it delivered to Mr Atherton?’

  Olivia gave another sob.

  An image of dark, curly-headed little Julian ought to have inspired her to respond in the affirmative. Instead, memories of Max’s warm smile and his gentle touch blinded her to reason. His kisses had ignited a need she thought she’d conquered. She covered her eyes and tried to banish his image.

  A fortnight, it had been. Two painful weeks since she had left him, and not an hour had passed without her yearning for him, yet she had spent barely two days in his company.

  She felt Nathaniel’s hand on her shoulder. She thought he might stroke her hair, or otherwise insinuate his touch upon her, but, as ever, he was the model of restraint and propriety.

  He indicated for her to pour him another cup of tea. When he spoke again his tone was intimate, collaborative. ‘Only you and I know all the terrible things you have done in Lucien’s name, but there are enough who have been a party to those events which have tarnished your reputation; some would say, forever. I, however, believe you can be redeemed. And I believe it is God’s will that I try.’

  Another nail in the coffin which housed her hopes and dreams. Max had risked his life for king and country. Honour and valour distinguished him. He could never understand, much less condone, the things Olivia had been forced to do, the wicked, terrible things to which Nathaniel referred.

  Still, she could not bend her will to Nathaniel’s so easily. Her stubborn spirit which had been the undoing of her in the first place finally came to the fore.

  ‘Your offer does me great honour, Reverend Kirkman,’ she said, drying her eyes as she banished her emotion. With dignified calm she gazed at the man who would be her husband; a man to whom she owed a great deal and who had eased some of the pain of her marriage, but whom she had no wish to marry. ‘Pray, allow me a day in which to consider it.’

  He appeared unfazed and relief washed over her. She hadn’t known how Nathaniel would react if she’d thwarted him. ‘A very proper request, my dear.’ He drained his tea cup, pushed back his chair and rose. Bowing, he said, ‘I shall return tomorrow afternoon to receive your answer.’

  She found her aunts waiting in the parlour like a couple of impatient schoolroom misses. They greeted her from the window embrasure which afforded an uninterrupted view of the summerhouse.

  ‘Did he ask you, Olivia?’ Aunt Catherine looked just like a little pea hen, the fluffy grey hair beneath her lace cap matching her dove-grey gown. Her kind, twinkling blue eyes were full of excited expectation.

  ‘Did you accept?’ Aunt Eunice’s voice cracked like a whip, her interest completely counter to her sister’s.

  ‘Come now, Eunice, why won’t you admit that marriage to the reverend is the best future Olivia could hope for?’ Catherine appealed to her taller, more formidable sister.

  ‘I said I’d give him his answer tomorrow.’ Olivia sank into the chair beside the window and picked up the book lying there, as if her recent assignation was of little account.

  ‘You will, of course, accept, dearest.’ Aunt Catherine lay her mittened hand upon Olivia’s shoulder briefly, before taking a seat on the sofa, opposite. Her myopic blue eyes blinked rapidly. ‘He is quite set upon it, you know.’

  ‘Should Olivia’s feelings not take precedence?’ Aunt Eunice’s tone was dry, as she took a seat beside her sister. ‘Let the girl alone, Catherine, and stop trying to force a match if Olivia’s feelings are not in accord with the reverend’s.’

  ‘Marriage to Mr Kirkman will enable Olivia to be reunited with Julian,’ Aunt Catherine argued. ‘He is guaranteed success. As a Godly, pious man he has the character required.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to do better. Certainly not in my current situation.’ Olivia put down the book and sighed. The lines of worry etched on her aunts’ faces reinforced the pain she had caused them.

  She was no longer an impulsive child. It was time to act as an adult, and in everyone’s best interests.

  If she could only tame her spirit to obey.

  Aunt Eunice sounded gloomy. ‘Far better to remain alone, Olivia, than subjugate yourself to a man who makes your repentance and submission his mission.’

  ‘Sister!’

  ‘I’ve considered that.’ Olivia cut through Aunt Catherine’s predictable admonition. ‘Yet if I cannot get Julian back any other way—’

  ‘Mr Kirkman is not the only Godly, pious man on the planet. Have patience, Olivia.’ There was an edge to Aunt Eunice’s voice. ‘Can’t you wait until your heart is in accord with one of the many men who fit this broad description? Max Atherton is not the fiend his cousin was. You said so yourself. He’d surely grant you the latitude to find a man you preferred, even one whose Godliness fell a little short of the reverend’s.’

  ‘And what else do you know of Max Atherton, Olivia?’ Aunt Catherine asked. ‘You spent two days with him and his sister. Can you imagine how anxious we were, despite the assurances you wrote us?’

  Olivia shrugged. It was too painful to dwell on Max and all that might have been had circumstances been different. ‘Men of integrity,’ she said, ‘tend not to find women like me to their taste, Aunt Eunice. I fear that Mr Atherton will need to be doubly satisfied that my husband is a Godly reformer.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Mr Kirkman undoubtedly fits that description.’

  ‘Good Lord, Olivia, that is not reason enough to marry him.’ Aunt Eunice scowled. ‘You talk as if you were so sunk in vice no decent man would have you in the same room with their wives.’

  ‘They wouldn’t.’

  ‘But if they knew the truth—’

  Olivia stopped her Aunt Catherine from continuing. ‘Who is going to tell them?’ She swallowed, the old bitterness banishing her blitheness. ‘Who, in the world, is going to champion me?’

  ‘Well, somebody should! Mr Atherton should, though it sounds as if your appeal fell on deaf ears. Your reputation has been tarnished by nothing but rumours.’ Aunt Eunice tried to sound dismissive, but Olivia heard the defensiveness in her tone. She suddenly felt very protective.

  ‘Aunt Eunice,’ she said, gently, ‘you know as well as I that the moment I’m introduced to anyone remotely respectable they won’t see me as Lady Farquhar.’ She shuddered as she recalled the shame Lucien had heaped upon her when he’d made her perform at his debauched gatherings. ‘They will think only of Lady Farquhar’s Butterfly.’ She had started her speech defiantly. Now her voice dropped away. ‘What man is brave enough to get beyond that stumbling block? I shall answer the reverend’s question in the affirmative tomorrow. There can be no other way.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘MAX, YOU PROMISED you would accompany us to church this morning.’ Amelia looked cross as she marshalled her boys, and h
er husband, into an orderly line before the front door. ‘You’ll be late! Why, you are still dressed for riding!’

  Max hesitated at the top of the sweeping marble staircase and looked down at his sister in the hallway below. Jonathon, Amelia’s longsuffering husband, raised his sandy eyebrows heavenward as if mentally and physically preparing himself for another spat between the siblings.

  ‘Sorry, Amelia,’ Max responded, carefully, ‘but I am not prepared to be seen out with you dressed like that.’

  Jonathon and Amelia swept their eyes over her cornflower-blue gown, topped on this chilly spring morning, with a smart white spencer. Jonathon looked startled, Amelia indignant. The two little boys giggled, scuffing their shoes on the marble flagstones.

  It was the gown Amelia had lent Olivia.

  Max descended a couple of steps and Amelia snapped as realization dawned. ‘She was a little trollop trying to insinuate herself into your affections, Max. She thought you would make her gifts of more than simply my gown. Hasn’t her continued silence made that clear enough? Though why you felt it necessary to break off your understanding with Miss Hepworth I don’t know! She was the ideal consort.’

  ‘She was very pleasing,’ Max agreed. ‘Ah, Frensham, I wondered where you’d got to with my valise.’

  ‘You are surely not accompanying Julian to his new home?’ Amelia stamped her foot. ‘You agreed it would be kinder not to.’ She closed her eyes as if marshalling patience. When she spoke again her tone was gentler. ‘Your investigations regarding The Reverend Kirkman’s character and your meeting with him satisfy Lucien’s idea of an acceptable husband for that scandalous wife of his – you knew you’d have to return the boy, sometime.’

  Jonathon cleared his throat. Max waited patiently, watching his brother-in-law’s breath mist in the cold air, the profile of his weak chin thrown into relief as the sunlight slanted through a high window and pooled across the flagstones.

  ‘Max,’ he said, ‘I know it’s hard, but it’ll be harder on you both if you do your leave-taking under the noses of Julian’s mother and her betrothed.’

  It was true. He’d thought it himself. ‘I know it,’ Max agreed, his shoulders slumping as he came down the stairs, ‘but the lad hasn’t stopped crying since he woke at dawn this morning.’

  ‘Perhaps Charlotte will take his mind off his troubles better than you will, Max.’ Jonathon clapped him on the shoulder as he drew level.

  ‘Say your farewells here, as you’d planned. Pretend you’re merely sending him off on a grand adventure and that you’ll be seeing him again shortly.’

  Max shook his head. ‘Funny,’ he reflected, ‘I had no idea what to do with the boy when Lucien saddled me with him.’ He swallowed past the lump in his throat. ‘Now I’ve no idea what I’ll do without him. Lord knows what I’m sending him to. I do at least owe him that! To find out, I mean. After all, Lady Farquhar was indisposed the day I met Kirkman. What do I know of Julian’s mother? Considering the stories, it’d be negligent if I did not satisfy myself as to her character.’ He looked appealingly at Jonathan and his sister who had just directed one of the servants to take their boys to church ahead of them.

  ‘I’d share your misgivings if you were returning him to his mother’s care, alone. But, Max’ – Amelia’s voice had lost its sympathetic edge – ‘you’ve established that Mr Kirkman is a pillar of the church, a fine upstanding citizen who will lead by example. He has made it his mission to redeem this wretched woman. Come along, Max!’ she urged.

  ‘You’re worse than a clucky mother hen. It’ll take you five minutes to change your clothes and we can still make it to church in good time.’

  ‘I hope you’ve made no promises to the boy’s nursemaid.’ Nathaniel tucked Olivia’s hand into the crook of his elbow as they strolled across the vast expanse of carpeted floor. All around the edges of the room the furniture was shrouded in dust sheets, lending The Lodge, Olivia’s old home, a neglected, shuttered air. Soon new tenants would make themselves at home here, the only means Olivia had of managing the financial upkeep on the nearby small dower house she shared with her aunts and in which Lucien had allowed her to live during her lifetime.

  He frowned. ‘We need to decide for ourselves if she is a fit and proper person to keep charge of the lad.’

  ‘Charlotte has cared for Julian since he was born! Her loyalty is beyond question.’

  Their gazes locked. Both of them knew this all too well. To Olivia it was a comfort. She swallowed as doubt stirred within. But to Nathaniel, Charlotte’s loyalty could represent a threat.

  To her relief he conceded, ‘It is perhaps best to keep her close.’ They stopped just inside the dining room. Olivia closed her eyes.

  The smell of dust and damp were different from the beeswax and woodsmoke she remembered, but the draughty remoteness was just the same. She and Lucien had entertained regularly in this room. It had been the setting for countless lively, raucous dinners, charades and games of cards for ridiculous wagers. She shuddered as Nathaniel took her past the long, mahogany table which could seat thirty, and upon which she had regularly been made to dance.

  All but naked.

  Nathaniel ran his hand over its dust-sheet-covered surface and glanced at her.

  The look in his eye told her he remembered, too.

  But his tone was bland as he reminded her, ‘Mr Charleston will arrive at the end of the month. I thought it appropriate Julian should be given some time, first, in which to settle in.’

  Olivia did not say she wondered at the wisdom, even questioned the kindness, of putting a boy so young into the charge of a tutor whom she had not yet met. Years of being Lucien’s wife had taught her caution; to think before she spoke. At least she had a little time to assert herself if she were unhappy at Nathaniel’s choice of tutor. The most important thing was that Julian would be with her.

  She must not think of Max. She squeezed her eyes shut. She would think of anything but Max, though recollections of his charming, easy manner and the kindness of his smile were constant reminders.

  ‘Reverend Kirkman, forgive the intrusion—’ Olivia faltered. The voice—! Oh, dear God, no!

  They were at the foot of the sweeping staircase about to ascend to the rooms above. Turning at the sound of footsteps and their visitor’s voice, Mr Kirkman’s face creased into a smile of welcome. Ushering Olivia forward, he extended his hand.

  ‘Mr Atherton, delighted you chose to accompany the lad.’

  Olivia could not bring herself to raise her eyes. She gripped Nathaniel’s forearm, her gaze fixed upon the sweeping stairs as if they provided refuge. Heat and shame flooded her. She was exposed.

  Yet was it no more than she deserved?

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Pray, allow me to introduce my betrothed, Lady Farquhar. Alas, she was indisposed when we met.’

  Dignified in the face of what must be his inevitable horror and disgust, Olivia slowly raised her head.

  ‘Mr Atherton,’ she said quietly, extending her hand, glad it was clad in neat fawn kid so he could not feel its clammy iciness.

  She saw his shock, quickly smothered by good manners as he bowed, brushing the back of her hand with his lips, murmuring, ‘What a pleasure it is to meet you, Lady Farquhar’ – she could swear he almost bared his teeth as he added – ‘having already met your betrothed.’

  The turmoil he struggled to hide pierced her to the quick. A month on and she could be in no doubt that he had felt her deception, her disappearance, keenly. A vein throbbed at his temple. The simmering anger in his slate-grey eyes reminded her more of her late husband than the easy-natured Max she loved.

  Concentrating on the points of her slippers she whispered, ‘I must thank you for providing my son with such excellent care during this past year. Where is he? I have waited a long time for this moment.’ It was pointless trying to communicate her feelings through her eyes. It was pointless trying to communicate her feelings through any medium when there could be no future between the
m.

  After being told that Julian had been taken to the dower house where he was being greeted by his great aunts, Nathaniel, with a proprietary air, said smoothly, ‘Lady Farquhar is a conscientious mother, Mr Atherton. You will recall from my letter that I have known her for the duration of her marriage and can vouch for her’ – he hesitated, as if imbuing the word with meaning – ‘softer side.’

  Max glanced sharply between the two before focusing his stony gaze upon Olivia. ‘It causes me great pain to part with the lad,’ he said, adding with heavy irony, ‘However only the cruellest of men would deny a child his mother’s love.’

  Focusing on the door at the top of the landing through which she wished she could simply disappear, Olivia nodded.

  Max drew himself up. ‘I was more than prepared to lend a sympathetic ear, Lady Farquhar, if you had chosen to petition me personally,’ He paused. ‘Instead, I see you are acceding, to the letter, the conditions laid out in my cousin’s will.’

  ‘I did write to petition you for Julian,’ Olivia said faintly. She could not look at him. Could not bear his disgust.

  ‘I seem to recall I suggested we meet in person.’

  She could hardly say that Nathaniel had decided his course was the better one.

  ‘Lady Farquhar and I shall be married just over the twelve months’ mourning period.’ Nathaniel’s voice sounded overloud and pompous.

  ‘I have known her, did I tell you, since her marriage to the late Lord Farquhar being as I was, in a manner of speaking, his religious adviser.’ Max nodded, still looking at Olivia. ‘You mentioned it, sir.’

  ‘Marriage is not an institution into which one enters lightly, as Lady Farquhar well knows.’ Nathaniel patted Olivia’s hand as colour burned her cheeks.

  How she hated his cloying condescension.

  Raising her head she saw Max’s lips curl into a bleak smile. ‘You are a fortunate man, Reverend.’