Louise Allen Historical Collection (23 page)

His father had never stinted himself on his stables. Ross strode across the cobbled yard, waving aside the groom who was sweeping out the central gutter. He had been riding out daily on one of his father’s cover hacks, a well-bred but sturdy animal that stood placidly while Ross grappled with the intricacies of crop rotation, but would take the hedge banks in its stride if necessary. And it was a sensible animal to ride for someone who had a healing wound in his leg. Despite what Meg thought, he was capable of some common sense as far as that was concerned, he reflected sourly, reaching for the bridle that hung by the door.

A black head appeared over the door of the next box, ears pricked, eye rolling warily. His father’s last acquisition, Culrose, the head groom, had told him.

‘Fabulous blood line and it cost him a pretty penny, my lord. But it’s the very devil to ride. Threw your father, first time out, and he never rode him again. I exercise it on the end of a leading rein—I don’t fancy having my neck broke, and that’s a fact.’

At the time Ross had simply made a mental note to sell the animal. Now he put back the bridle and went to look at it. As he let himself into the box he saw it was no gelding, but an intact stallion. ‘Stop that.’ He grabbed its forelock as it snaked out its neck to bite him and hung on as it countered by trying to rear. ‘Do you want to get out of here and gallop, or not?’

The horse showed the whites of its eyes, but stood still, obviously realising that he was not to be intimidated. With one hand still fast in its forelock, Ross shouted, ‘Get me the tack!’ and found, when he looked over his shoulder, a collection of grooms and stable lads all watching the half-door with wary anticipation. He hoped they would have the guts to come in and haul him out if the creature kicked him down.

‘My lord.’ One lad heaved the saddle up on to the door and hung the bridle over the pommel.

Ross managed, one handed, to get the bit in its mouth, then the bridle over its head. The horse stood with remarkable, and suspicious, meekness when he released its mane and began to fasten buckles.

‘What’s its name?’

‘Trevarras Dragon, my lord.’

Appropriate. Ross could imagine it breathing fire. As he hefted the saddle on to its back he felt the muscles twitch under the glossy coat. Did it have the intelligence to work out it could do him a lot more damage once he got up on its back? Probably.

‘Open the door and stand clear.’ As Dragon charged for the opening Ross swung up into the saddle, ducked under the frame and jammed his feet into the swinging stirrups before the horse realised what had happened. It erupted into the open, the men and boys scattering, then stopped dead, legs braced, ears back. Ross could almost hear it thinking how it was going to kill him. He shortened the reins, closed his legs and dug his heels in as the stallion went sideways across the yard, bucking, then dragged its head round to the gateway and slackened the reins.

As he hoped, the chance to run won over the desire to unseat and trample its rider. Dragon gathered his haunches under him and took off, all seventeen hands of black-coated muscle thundering down the carriage drive like one of Congreve’s rockets.
And just about as predictable
, Ross thought, concentrating on staying on until the stallion tired itself.

His leg hurt like the devil, his arms were aching and his mood had lifted miraculously. It was not just Dragon who had wanted violent physical exercise. Ross laughed as his hat flew off, squinted against the sun and galloped on.

It took all of twenty minutes before Dragon allowed himself to be pulled up to a canter, by which time they had jumped too many banks and hedges to count and devoured the length of the gorse-covered commonland.

‘Give up?’ Ross enquired. One ear swivelled back, then, to his surprise, the big horse responded to the rein, dropped down to a trot and finally a walk. ‘You see? If you are reasonable, I let you run,’ he continued as they came to the edge of the common and turned into the lane.

Dragon snorted, but it was the peal of feminine laughter that startled Ross. A tall woman in a plain gown with an apron, her blonde hair piled up on her head and a basket at her feet, was leaning back on the gate opposite. She must have been resting and admiring the view, Ross guessed, and had turned at the sound of hooves.

And then a cloud moved across the sun and took the dazzle out of his eyes and thirteen years dropped away. ‘Lily!’ He swung down out of the saddle and went to her, catching her around the waist and kissing her, right on her wide, generous mouth. ‘My God, but it is good to see you! Billy told me you were down on the Lizard.’

‘I only went to help my cousin with a birthing.’ She put out her hands to hold him away so she could look at him and Ross saw the lines of laughter and sadness around her eyes, the silver hairs in the gold, and realised she must be in her mid-thirties now. ‘Look at you now, all grown up.’

They stood grinning at each other and Ross felt the darkness lift further. Lily was another of the good memories from his youth. Three years older, she had been the sister he had never had. When he had discovered that his father had forced himself on her, leaving her with his child, a killing rage had washed through him. Even as he smiled at her now the lash of that remembered anger, hot and acid, touched him.

‘I’ve someone for you to meet. William!’ she called. ‘He’s grown a bit since you last saw him.’ A gangling lad appeared from round the bend of the lane, a bundle of driftwood slung over his shoulder.

‘My God.’ The boy was the spitting image of himself at fifteen—black hair, height, build, the formidable Brandon jaw and nose still to be grown into. ‘Does he know?’ he asked Lily urgently. ‘Does he know who he is, who I am?’

‘Yes…’ she nodded as his father’s discarded bastard broke into a run, ‘…he knows.’

‘Mam.’ The boy stared at Ross with Billy’s amber eyes. He was not all Brandon then.

‘Say good day to his lordship, William. Where’s your manners?’

‘Good day, my lord.’ He reached for his forelock to tug it.

Ross put out his hand and caught his wrist. ‘Don’t do that. And not “my lord”. I am your brother Ross.’

Lily gasped. ‘You can’t mean to acknowledge him?’

‘I don’t need to.’ Ross let go of William’s wrist and tipped up the boy’s chin. ‘Look at that jaw.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘But, yes, he is my brother and I will make no bones about it. You call me Ross, William. “Sir”, perhaps, when we don’t want to shock the servants.’

‘Yes, my…sir. Ross.’ The Cornish burr was rich in the boy’s voice, warm under the more refined accent Ross suspected Lily had schooled him to use. She’d been his mother’s maid until his father’s eye had lighted on her. ‘You’re fifteen now?’

‘Yes.’ The amber eyes were wide, full of intelligence and wary speculation.

‘He’s starting on the fishing boats next month,’ Lily said. Ross could hear the pride and the fear in her voice. Pride that her lad was growing up, working and earning. Fear because the churchyards of St Just and St Anthony were full of the graves of fishermen from this treacherous coast.

‘Do you want to be a fisherman, William?’

No
, those eyes said. ‘It’s a steady job.’ The boy shrugged. ‘The money’s not bad.’

‘What do you want to do—if you could do anything, any work?’

‘Be a lawyer.’ The answer shot back, even as William ducked to avoid his mother’s exasperated cuff round the ear.

‘Fool of a boy.’

‘Why? Can you read and write, William?’

‘I can, sir. Ross, I mean. I love reading—books, newspapers. Whatever I can get my hands on.’ He grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. ‘And lawyers make sure people get their rights,’ he added pugnaciously.

‘Oh, be quiet do, Will!’ Lily shook her head at Ross. ‘He reads all the newspapers he can find—he’s turning out to be one of these radicals, that’s what I fear. He’ll end up with some mob, breaking windows.’

‘Not if he is training to be a lawyer.’ Ross wondered what had left the boy with such an idealistic view of the legal profession. ‘They aren’t all knights in shining armour, you know, William.’

‘Well, it’s pie in the sky anyways.’ Lily picked up her basket. ‘A man’s got to go to university to be a lawyer, I know that.’

‘He’ll need a tutor, certainly.’ Ross turned and found, to his surprise, Dragon was standing where he had left him. He picked up the reins and began to walk alongside Lily and William.
My brother.
He’d lost Giles, but this one had his whole life in front of him. ‘And he can go and work in Kimber’s office one day a week. When he’s old enough, university. There’s more to it than that, but Kimber can tell us what’s needed.’ He looked down at William who had stopped dead, his mouth open. ‘Would you like that?’

The boy stared back, then bit his lip, his expression clouding over. ‘Thank you very much, but I have to earn a wage.’

‘You are my brother, so you get an allowance. I’ll talk to your mother about it. Now, take that firewood home and leave us to sort out the details. Oh, and, William, you may use the library at the Court at any time.’

His brother just looked at him, his throat working, then he muttered, ‘Thank you, Ross’, turned and took to his heels.

Ross smiled at Lily, who stood there staring at him.

‘He’s grateful,’ she began. ‘But he’s…’

‘He’s a bit overwhelmed. It is all right, Lily. I can remember being that age. What’s the matter?’

‘It’s a dream, it’s perfect. But you can’t do it, Ross. People will think he’s yours.’

‘He
is
mine—my brother—and I’ll tell anyone that, straight out. My father’s habits are well enough known for people to believe it if I acknowledge him. I was coming to see you when you got back, Lily, to see what I could do to help. There’s a cottage on the estate you might like and there will be an allowance for you, as well as for William.’ She tried to protest, but he closed his hand over hers and squeezed. ‘Let me help, Lily. Let me try to make it right.’

She squeezed his fingers in return. ‘Thank you. Yes, I’ll accept, for William, and be thankful. You’ve grown into a fine man, Ross.’

‘I’m a soldier, Lily, a killer who has got to learn to be a landowner. I’m so far out of my depth I think half the time I’m drowning.’ The relief of having someone who knew him so well, someone he could pour it all out to, was shattering. And with Lily there were none of the feelings that almost overwhelmed him when he was with Meg. Feelings that were more than lust and longing and which he could not understand.

But even to Lily he could not speak of the death and the blood and the feeling that all he had seen and done made him unfit for decent people, for the life duty told him he must lead. Or for the wife he knew he should take.

‘You’ll learn,’ Lily said comfortably as they strolled down the lane. ‘Just don’t be your father, that’s all anyone round these parts would ask of you.’

The sense of happiness vanished abruptly. ‘I look like him. I scared Heneage half to death this afternoon—he thought he’d seen a ghost, poor old devil. But it was just me scowling.’ Meg’s words, the words he had pushed away into a corner of his mind so he did not have to look at them, came back.
Territorial, possessive…your father’s shoes.

‘Did he rape you, Lily?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Did he force you, or was it that he threatened ruin and dispossession for the whole family so you had to give in to him?’

‘He had no need to use force,’ Lily said. ‘Just threats. He owned me, he said. He was the lord, I was his to do with as he wanted or we could all get out and starve.
Mine,
he said.’

Ross felt physically sick.
You are mine and you know it
, he had flung at Meg.
Mine
, he had said as he crushed her body under his, his mouth on her neck. She was right, he was turning into his father.

‘I must go.’ He mounted Dragon and sat looking down at her tired, open, loving face. ‘Come and see me tomorrow, Lily, if you can, and we’ll decide which cottage you’d like—there are three empty. Bring William and we can talk some more.’

‘Thank you, Ross.’ She put her hand on the rein. ‘My father is so happy you are home.’

He forced a smile and dug his heels into Dragon’s flanks, urging him into a canter as soon as they were clear of Lily. He had not trusted himself to reply. Home? Perhaps he was coming to feel like that about it at last. The torrent of information about the farms, the estate, the fishing boats that he owned, that was all beginning to make sense now. He had a brother to discover and old friends to talk to.

And Meg was chasing the ghost of his father out of the house, room by room, making it warm and light and alive again, fit for a young wife to inhabit, fit for a family.

‘Oh, God. Meg.’ Ross reined in, provoking a display of temper and resistance from the stallion that had him cursing and sweating by the time the animal accepted that he had to walk again. What the devil was he going to do about Meg?