Pit Bank Wench (42 page)

She had given her answer to Liam. They were to be married.

In Ireland, he had said, where his mother could be present to see them joined.

If only her own mother could be at the wedding, with Carrie as bridesmaid . . . would that have induced the emotion she knew she should be feeling? The marriages she had witnessed at Doe Bank had each girl breathless with excitement, every moment of preparation a joy. Was her own quiet acceptance because of her lack of family or . . . ?

But there could be no ‘or’. She hitched the basket, feeling it bite into her hip. There was nothing to detract from her happiness with Liam. She was tired, that was all. The waterway finished, they would move to Ireland and there her life could begin again.

Liam was happy. Her son would have a father. It all sounded perfect, so why could she not smile?

‘Good morning, Mrs Price.’

Deep in thought, she had been oblivious of the carriage approaching from the opposite direction. Now as it drew to a halt she looked up at the driver.

Feeling the blood rise into her cheeks, she glanced quickly away from black eyes that instantly seemed to see deep inside her.

‘Allow me to relieve you of that?’

He was already beside her taking the basket as he spoke, placing it in the back of the trap.

‘There is no need . . . I can manage . . .’

‘But I cannot.’ He brushed aside her protests. ‘I cannot talk to you while you have that thing stuck on your hip. Climb into the trap, please.’

He was the same imperious Carver Felton she had known before. Taking everything for granted, ordering things his own way. When she had watched him with Paul she’d thought he had changed, softened somehow, but now she saw she had been wrong. This man did not change his colours.

Resentment adding waspishness to her tone, Emma ignored the hand he offered. ‘I prefer to walk, Mr Felton, and to walk alone. Please return my basket.’

‘Not all preferences prove to be in our own best interests.’ He dropped his hand to his side. ‘If you insist on walking then we will walk, but carry that basket you will not do.’

‘I carry it every day.’

‘But I am not with you every day. When I am you will carry nothing. Except maybe our child.’

The colour already high in her cheeks flared wildly. Our child! He had not used those words before. He had referred to Paul as ‘my son’ or ‘your child’, but never as ‘our child’. Why had he done so now? Was it to humiliate her?

Lifting her gaze to his she fought down the bitterness building in her, though her answer was icy.

‘Paul is already a competent walker, Mr Felton, but should he need to be carried then his stepfather will be glad to do it.’

At his sides, Carver’s hands curled into tight fists, but apart from the set of his lips he showed little of the blow she had just dealt him. In all the months since he had realised the depth of his love for Emma Price, in all those long lonely nights of seeing her face in the shadows of his mind, through it all he had felt a sort of hope. Now he watched those lovely eyes flash defiance at him. That hope had been a desolate one. Pride and arrogance had caused him to prevent a marriage between her and his brother, and stupidity had prevented him from seeking her out when his own love for her had forced its recognition. But he would pay, and for the rest of his life; pay with the pain of knowing she was another man’s wife.

Taking the reins he turned the horse back in the direction he had come, walking towards Plovers Croft.

Why must he insist on helping her? Her silence stony, Emma fell into step beside him. She did not want his help or his company. Drawing her shawl tight she stared steadily along the road ahead.

She wanted no more of Carver Felton.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘I still think you be making a mistake.’

Daisy’s comment was forthright as she watched Emma button the boy’s tunic.

‘The break has to come so why not make it now? What purpose does it serve to take the boy to that house?’

Daisy made sense, of course. It served no other purpose than to strengthen the bond that had already sprung up between father and son.

Father and son! Emma’s fingers trembled on the last button. Paul would grow up not knowing his true father, childhood memories soon faded. But would Carver Felton’s memories ever fade? He would no doubt marry and have other children. Would that erase the memory of Paul?

‘You should have told him when he asked,’ Daisy pressed her point. ‘Told him you didn’t want him seeing the boy again, not ever.’

Emma pushed herself up from her haunches, her hand dropping from the boy’s shoulder. He ran from the room. ‘Would that be fair, either to Paul or to . . . to . . .’

‘And what of Liam?’ Daisy took advantage of the hesitation. ‘Are you being fair to him? How do you think he feels, seeing you going off to the Felton place?’

Frowning, Emma turned to her friend whose voice held a hint of accusation.

‘What do you mean? Liam knows I go only so Paul may see the horses.’

‘Does he, Emma? Does Liam really think that? Or does he feel the fear any man would? That the feelings which draw you to that house lie not with any horse, but with the owner of them!’

‘Daisy!’ Emma was aghast. ‘Liam would never think that. He knows it is not true.’

Her eyes clouding with sudden sadness, Daisy regarded her closely.

‘Does he, Emma? Does Liam know the truth? What’s more important, do you?’

Daisy was putting entirely the wrong connotation on things. Emma watched her child explore every bush of gorse, run after butterflies that fluttered away as his eager hand reached out for them. But her happiness in his delight of a world that had lain hidden from him for so long was marred by memories of that conversation. Of course Liam knew the truth about her meetings with Carver Felton, and of course she knew it too. She saw allowing him these few meetings with Paul as only fitting after he had done so much for the child. But today would be the last time they would be together, the last time she would bring Paul here.

They were leaving at the weekend. Emma felt again the strange sharp pang she’d experienced when Liam had told her of his plans; the same emptiness that had followed.

The work was finished, it was time to leave. They would travel with Daisy and Brady and be married in Ireland. It all sounded so simple, yet inside she had felt a sort of turmoil and when that had drained away there’d been nothing left in its wake; none of the joy or excitement that radiated from Daisy’s face, nothing but a cold empty void.

Why? The question had come to her a hundred times but now as then the answer would not follow.

‘This is where we see the horses, isn’t it, Mama?’

Emma pulled her shawl a little more firmly about her shoulders as she followed the small dancing figure through the high wrought-iron gates. The house was almost as beautiful outside as in. Red brick and cream stone gleaming in the sunlight of late afternoon seemed to smile a welcome, but today Emma felt none of its warmth.

‘Father!’ The delighted squeal breaking her reverie she stood still as the child ran towards the tall figure who waited with arms outstretched.

How could he give up the child? How could Carver Felton part from the son he loved so much? Emma’s heart leaped as it always did on seeing the two of them together. Might he in the end renounce his promise and take the child from her? She watched as he scooped the laughing boy into his arms, whirling him round and round with a delight it was painful for her to witness.

This must be the reason for her feeling of emptiness, the lack of joy in her own forthcoming marriage. This was her fear. That one day Carver Felton would reclaim his son.

‘I think we must let this young man go to the stables.’

The deep chuckle pulling at her nerves Emma remained unsmiling as Carver set the child down. Walking with them around the back of the house to where the stables and carriage house formed an elongated ‘L’ shape.

She would stay only a few minutes, just long enough for the groom to lead Paul on a pony once around the paddock. Accompanied by cries of delight, she watched Carver swing the child into the saddle. Just once around the paddock then she would leave. And before she went she would tell him that today was their final meeting.

‘It is so good of you to bring him.’ Carver turned to her, his dark eyes sweeping in every detail of her face. ‘But I would much rather you’d accept my offer of a carriage.’

Emma turned her face to watch the boy and the groom disappearing around the far corner of the building. ‘I prefer to walk, and Paul enjoys the freedom of the heath; he so rarely gets to run far, my work means he’s mostly confined indoors.’

‘It need not be that way.’

Carver’s answer was surprisingly gentle but perversely it grated on nerves already worn raw and her answer came out with a sharpness she had not intended.

‘It will not be from this weekend. I . . . my husband is taking us to his home in Ireland. Paul will have plenty of open space to run in safety there.’

‘Ireland!’

Carver could not stop the outburst and as Emma turned her glance to him and saw the look of desolation sweep into his eyes, she felt an answering one sweep into her heart.

He turned towards the house, face averted from her, but when he spoke his voice held a thread of anger.

‘I had not thought of your leaving this country. Please come into the house, there are matters we must discuss.’

Blood freezing in her veins, Emma followed dumbly. She had lived with this fear for so long. He had taken her son from her once, was he about to do it again?

Seated in the gracious room she had been shown into once before she sat staring at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

Beneath the high window, his back turned to her, Carver Felton’s shoulders drooped as if carrying too heavy a load. When he eventually spoke it was with an anguish not completely concealed from her.

‘Mrs Price.’ He kept his back to her. ‘There is something you must know. Perhaps it was dishonest of me not to have told you before. It concerns the child.’

Emma’s fingers twisted convulsively, driving her nails deep into her flesh.

‘When my brother died . . .’

‘Died!’ The cry that broke from her brought him round to face her.

‘You did not know?’

Tears filling her throat, Emma could only shake her head.

‘I’m sorry. Had I known I would have been less abrupt. Paul returned ill from a business meeting two years ago . . .’

Emma’s mind went back to the last time she had met Paul Felton. That was about two years ago. ‘I . . . I saw him. I did not know . . .’

‘None of us did. He had contracted typhoid. He collapsed on the heath and was taken to Doe Bank. He was nursed there by a woman named Jerusha Paget. It seems she had some skill with herbal medicines, but by the time the fool of a woman sent word to me, my brother was beyond help.’

Feeling emotions war within her, Emma lifted her head. Carver Felton’s pain was as real as it was raw, but that did not excuse his maligning a woman he did not know.

‘I realise how you must have felt,’ she said calmly, ‘how you must still feel. But believe me, Mr Felton, Jerusha was no fool. She held no medical qualification but her skills were such that she had the trust and confidence of people from every village for miles around. She nursed many back to health when the parish doctor had written them off. If it had been possible to save your brother then she would have done so, but we all know typhoid to be deadly.’

‘Deadly enough to take the old woman and half of that village with her.’

His words weighing on her like stones, Emma bit her lip. First her family, then Paul and Jerusha. The people she had loved most in the world all taken from her. There had been talk in the camp of illness at the Hall following Jerusha’s death. But she had thought Paul to be abroad.

‘But that is not what I have to discuss with you.’ Carver walked from the window, taking a chair opposite hers. ‘It is the matter of my brother’s will.’

Confused, Emma looked at that strong face, marked now by something other than sorrow. Something she might have called guilt.

‘Paul’s will? I don’t understand. That can have nothing to do with me.’

‘Directly, no. But as the mother of his nephew . . .’

‘His nephew? But Paul never knew, I . . .’

‘You did not tell him.’ Carver’s tone softened. ‘You did not tell me either. Paul saw the child in your arms and needed no one to name his father, just as I needed none. He did not need to guess what I had done, that I forced myself upon you to prevent your marrying him; deliberately kept you apart. I did my brother a great wrong, one I can never redress or forget, just as I will never forget the suffering I have caused you.’

‘That is over and done with.’ Emma glanced away, unable to watch the remorse that clouded those dark eyes.

‘For me it can never be over.’ He stood up, moving restlessly to stand staring into the empty fireplace. For long seconds he remained immobile, a gilt clock measuring the silence with a muted tick. At last, drawing himself up, he turned about. ‘Mrs Price, I said earlier I had not been entirely honest with you on our previous meetings. Forgive me but I had my reasons. I did not tell you before because I had no wish for you to bring the child to visit out of a sense of moral obligation. I have no desire for you or the child to feel that. Nor, I feel sure, would my brother. The fact is that under the terms of Paul’s will, this house, his share of the business and everything belonging to him, is now his nephew’s.’

Beaufort House . . . and everything Paul Felton had once owned now her son’s! Emma sat in stunned silence. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. It was a trick to keep her son here.

‘You had to know, Mrs Price,’ Carver said when she did not speak. ‘You had to be told before you took your son away.’