Sattler, Veronica (65 page)

There
was another rapid burst of Italian from Signore Capetti, and the priest
translated. "He says he's-a geeve-a her someteeng to make-a her sleep.
Please-a, not to ask-a her questions unteel she's-a wake up."

A
smile of relief broke over Patrick's face. "Well, that's good news, I
should say! Now, what about the children? Shall we—"

Another
barrage of Italian cut him off.

"Signore
Capetti says he's-a weesh to-a see
la duchessa piccola
and-a da
bambini
on-a da beeg-a sheep. He's-a say he's-a alraddy examine da bambini on-a
dees-a sheep, and-a dey varry good."

Brett
nodded. "We'll board the
Ravenscrest
immediately." He strode
to the door of the cabin and opened it, then turned to Patrick. "Patrick,
I'd appreciate it if you'd stay here... with
her.
And send me word when
she awakens?"

Patrick
nodded.

"Very
well, then,
signori,"
he said to the other two, "if you'll
follow me?"

They
boarded Brett's ship, which he'd moved to lie at anchor beside Patrick's during
the early hours of the morning. Brett's first mate, Geordie Scott, met them as
they came on board.

"Is
my wife still in my cabin, Mr. Scott?" Brett asked.

"Aye,
Your Grace," said Scott. "I looked in on her not fifteen minutes ago.
Sleepin' like a babe, she was."

"And
the children on board, what of them?"

Mr.
Scott's weather-beaten face crinkled as a wide grin spread across it.
"Livelier 'n a barrel o' eels, Cap'n. Isn't one o' them tykes looks the
worse for what they've been through. Cook's feedin' 'em breakfast right
now."

"Very
good, Mr. Scott. Sounds like you've got things well in hand. Carry on while I
escort these gentlemen to my cabin."

"Aye,
Your Grace."

Scott
left them, and Brett motioned to the priest and the doctor to follow him as he
strode briskly to his cabin.

As
he walked, his thoughts were jumbled and disjointed.
Maria, his mother? It
didn't yet seem possible! She was
nothing
like what he'd come to—God!
The fire! They had
both
nearly died in the fire! They'd both lied to
him, too.... Deceit... wasn't it the one thing you could rely on where women were
con— But Patrick had lied, too, and he was an honorable ma
— Oh, God,
Mother!
Why did you keep silent all these years? I thought you were dead—or
as good as dead. I believed you didn't care....

Suddenly
the door to his cabin loomed up before him, and Brett's thoughts switched to
the moment at hand. He turned to the two men behind him.

"Here
we are, gentlemen, but I ask you to give me a moment with my wife before you
join us."

The
priest nodded and spoke briefly in Italian to Signore Capetti in low tones;
Brett opened the door.

When
he entered, his first thought was that she'd fled his cabin because the huge
bed at one end of it was unoccupied. But then his gaze flew across the room to
his desk. There, her hands braced on the back of the chair in front of it,
stood Ashleigh, dressed in one of his shirts, its ample folds nearly dwarfing
her.

She
looked up at him, a bewildered expression on her face, then glanced at the
floor near her feet. "Oh, Brett, I—
Help me, please!"

Following
her gaze, he saw that the hem of his shirt was clinging wetly to her thighs and
she was standing in a puddle of water.

"Oh
my God, Ashleigh!" he cried as he rushed over to her. "It's the baby!
Your water's broken!"

Lifting
her up into his arms, he shouted over his shoulder, "Signore Capetti, come
quickly! The baby's coming!"

But
as the door behind him opened and he carried her toward the bed, he thought,
but
the baby isn't supposed to come for two more months yet!

* * * * *

"If
ye don't stop that pacin', ye're liable t' wear a hole in the floor, Yer
Grace," said Megan. "Relax. This isn't the first babe t' enter the
world, ye know, and of all those that did, I niver heard o' one 'twas helped
along by the father's pacin'."

Brett
turned sharply to look at her. "But most of those that arrive safely come
after nine months—not seven!"

Megan
smiled. "Perhaps, but ye're lookin' at one that did come at seven!"

He
frowned.
"You?"

She
nodded. "Aye,
me.
And a good thing 'twas, too, fer me poor ma! Full
size, I was, at seven months. I weighed
half a stone!
Can ye imagine
what might have happened if I'd gone t' nine? 'Twas God's way o' intervenin',
the midwife told me ma. Said if I'd been in there much longer, I'd have split
her asunder."

Brett
winced at this, and Megan felt instantly sorry for him. He was nervous as the
proverbial cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, poor man, and exhausted, too, by
the looks of him.

"Look,
Yer Grace," she began, "why don't ye—"

"Megan,
if you 'Yer Grace' me one more time, I swear, I'll—" He stopped, forced a
smile to his weary features and softened his tone. "That is, don't you
think you might call me Brett now? After all, you are my best friend's wife as
well as my wife's best friend—and Lady St. Clare, to boot. How'd you like it if
I suddenly took to calling you m'lady all the time?"

Megan
hid a smile. "Why, I wouldn't fancy it at all, at all... Brett."

"There."
He attempted a smile. "That didn't hurt a bit, did it?"

"No."
The redhead sighed. "But, Brett?"

He
raised an eyebrow.

"Yer
bloody pacin's drivin' me t' Bedlam!"

Brett
paused, then broke into a hearty laugh, and Megan joined him.

"That's
the trouble with the Irish," he scolded good-naturedly. "Give them an
inch and they stretch it to a furlong!"

"No,
no, you've got it all wrong." She laughed. "'Tis our Irish horses'll
take the furlongs—we folk'll settle fer acres—as many acres o' good Irish soil
as we can take back from—"

Just
then, a knock sounded at the door. Brett whirled around, tensed, then forced
himself to relax. It was probably just Abner Thornton again, coming to retrieve
something from his cabin.

"Come
in," he called.

The
door opened, and Maria stood there, leaning shakily on Patrick's arm. She wore
a beautiful day gown of peach silk with dark green trim, and her hair was
neatly braided in a high chignon, but her face appeared pale as she attempted a
weak smile.

"I...
thought it was time we... talked," she said quietly.

Brett
gave her a long, searching look, then nodded.

"I'll
be lookin' in on Ashleigh," Megan said softly, then left with Patrick, but
not before lightly touching Brett's sleeve and sending Maria an encouraging
smile.

When
they were alone, Brett offered Maria a chair, saying, "I hope it won't
prove unwise for you to leave your bed this soon. How... how are you
feeling?"

Accepting
the chair, Maria attempted a laugh. "I've felt better." Then she
looked up at him. "But I think you'll agree that... that this couldn't
wait."

"If,
by 'this,' you mean a long overdue conversation, I suppose not." His eyes
met hers and held.
"Years
overdue, Maria."

Again
an attempt at laughter, but it came out forced and broken. "I suppose I
should be glad you've addressed me as Maria! It could have been
'contessa'
or
'my lady,' couldn't it?"

The
cynicism was back in Brett's eyes. "What did you expect, Maria? Surely you
didn't think I would address as 'Mother' a woman I haven't seen for
twenty-seven
years!
Twenty-seven years, Maria!"

His
mother's eyes closed for a moment, as if to shut out some remembered pain. She
breathed deeply, then opened them to look at him. "And not a day, an hour,
really, in all of them that I didn't yearn to be with you... didn't hold you in
my heart."

Brett's
eyes were expressionless as he raised them to a point above her head. "I
wish I could believe that."

"But
it's true! And the only reason I'm here is because I've made myself hope that I
can convince you to believe it! Oh, Brett, you cannot know what it was like at
the time they forced me to—" She caught the rising emotion in her voice
and took a moment to compose herself, then continued.

"I
want you to know that I loved your father. And, if you will let yourself
believe it, that I went on loving him, even after, after he—they—obtained the
divorce. Oh, I was hurt, deeply hurt, that he should have given in so easily
to... to those forces that opposed my presence in his life; that he should have
so readily believed the lies in those forgeries—I understand Patrick explained
the details?"

"He
did." Brett's eyes flew back to hers. "But why didn't you fight them?
I've seen you here in Livorno. You're a strong woman. It's evident in
everything you do, Maria. So how can you expect me to believe you meekly stood
by and let them vilify you, drive you out of my life, and my father's,
when—"

"But
you are wrong, Brett! The young woman I was then bore no resemblance to the
woman I am now! Mary Westmont was a bewildered, frightened young woman who
suddenly found herself in an untenable position in a country that was not even
her own. I was alone—without family or friends, except for the Sinclairs, and
believe me, they were no match for the powerful duke of Ravensford! Maria di
Montefiori is the product of years of—of pain and finding the strength,
somehow, to endure in spite of it—that, and a little luck.

"Did
you know that I only remarried after I received word of your father's
death?" She watched him register surprise. "It's true. For even
though he divorced me, shut me out of his life, I continued to consider myself
his wife until... until he died. Then, and only then, did I accept Gregorio's offer
of marriage—an offer that was made years earlier!"

"Then...
how did you survive? I thought—"

"You
thought I walked right out of one rich marriage and into another?"
Wearily, she shook her head. "Hardly. Oh, I knew Gregorio and his family,
and for a while after I first arrived, they gave me a roof over my head and
wanted me to remain with them, but I told them I couldn't. After the initial
pain and shock wore away, I went to see Father Umberto with an idea. My
mother—your grandmother—was a successful opera singer. Although I hadn't
inherited her talent—or, more important, her drive to sing, to train my voice
in the rigorous way that the profession demands, I had received some early
training and had a reasonably good voice, and some basics of a musical
background.

"So,
with Father Umberto's help, I set myself up as a music teacher. I gave lessons
in voice and on the pianoforte. For seven years, Brett, until your father's
death, and I felt myself free... to marry."

Brett
looked astounded. "It—it couldn't have been much of a living. I've seen
what they pay music masters in England, and I doubt it could have been
different here. My God, Maria, you might have starved!"

She
laughed, and this time it wasn't forced. "Oh, there were a few times, I
daresay, when it was close—when I went fishing to put food on the table. But,
truly, Brett, it wasn't that bad.

"You
see, for the first time in my life, I was forced to rely on myself, and—I know
this will sound odd, but it's true—there was a kind of exhilaration about it,
to know I was able to do it, despite the odds!"

She
smiled softly to herself, her eyes looking as if they saw something far away.
"Those were wonderful years, really. During that time I truly came to know
myself, what my strengths were... and my weaknesses."

Her
gaze returned to Brett. "The only thing that kept them from... from being
truly satisfying or—or fulfilling was a great gaping hole I had inside me...
the void left by you.

"And
whether you choose to believe me or not, Brett, I tell you, I loved you—have
continued to love you, every moment since the day I bore you thirty years ago.
And it was that love, and the unquenchable hope that I would one day see you
again, that really allowed me to survive those years."

She
reached into the square neckline of her gown and withdrew the chain with half a
locket on it; with trembling hands, she unfastened it and handed it to him.

"Here,
my son," she whispered as tears began to form in her eyes, "I think
it is time you had this."

Brett
took the locket into his palm and stared at it, stunned, for several long
seconds. At last he raised his head and met her shining eyes.

"It
was you?"
he
whispered.

Nodding
her head, her eyes on his, his mother smiled through her tears. "It was.
This is the first time, in twenty-seven years, I have taken it off. And I only
do so now because I have you here with me, in the flesh."

Brett
stood very still, trying to assimilate everything her words implied. It was not
an easy moment for him. In just a few minutes, with a few simple words, she had
begun to demolish some very basic notions he had lived with nearly all his
life. And actually, if he were honest, the demolition had begun even before
this; it had started the moment he'd come to Livorno and met her, when he'd
seen the reality that was Mary Westmont, unhampered by the blinding prejudices
he'd been raised with.