Daisychain Summer. Elizabeth ElginЧитать онлайн книгу.
you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’
‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’
‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’
‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’
‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’
‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.
‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.
‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’
‘My son, Tom!’
‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’
‘Dear, sweet heaven, you can be so stubborn!’ She stood, hands on hips, cheeks blazing red. ‘I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d understand, aye, and happen sympathize, an’ all. But everything is either black or white to you, isn’t it? You don’t allow for the shades of grey, in between.
‘And I wasn’t going to tell you all, because I thought there’d be no need to. There was one thing I didn’t want you to know; but since you see fit to set yourself up as judge and jury and find us all guilty, then best you should know that young Drew is a Sutton! He’s taking what would, in the course of time, have passed to his father – to Elliot Sutton!
‘There, Tom! You have it all, now – every last sordid bit of it. The drunk who tumbled me on the floor of a cowshed was the man you so hate, so think on before you pass judgement on me!’
She stood, tears streaking her cheeks, shaking with anger and dismay at what she had said. And she looked into the face of the man she loved and saw hatred in his eyes.
‘Elliot Sutton!’ he spat through clamped jaws. ‘So he had his way with you, in the end?’
‘Aye. He tried it in Brattocks Wood, didn’t he, when I was a bit of a lass. But I had Morgan with me then, and Reuben within calling distance. And I had a young man who thrashed him for what he’d tried to do. But no one was there to help me that night in Celverte, Tom; neither the dog nor Reuben, nor you! You were dead, remember?’
‘Thrashed him? I should have killed him!’ He drove his fist hard into the palm of his hand. ‘That first time he tried, I should have beaten the life out of him. And I would, if I’d thought I could’ve got away with it.’
His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.
It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.
She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything would she!
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’
He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.
She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’
‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.
‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’
‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’
‘So the little lad is fair?’
‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’
‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’
‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’
He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.
‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’
‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’
‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.
‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’
‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.
‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d