Chapter 40

Scything, Rufus had discovered, was harder than it looked. Not quite trusting himself to take on the courtyard, he was in the kitchen garden, thrashing away inefficiently at the weeds that had not only run riot there, but were, in places, almost as tall as he was. Despite his lack of facility, and the fact he was soaking through his shirt beneath the mellow late summer sun, it was strangely enjoyable work. Swallowfield was not the sort of undertaking where action always led so directly to outcome, for it would probably take years for the estate to fully recover. That was not a thought that troubled him—he had time; he could imagine nowhere he would rather be—but it did mean he welcomed the simplicity of mowing grass and watching the grass he mowed get smaller as he mowed it.

However, he had made the choice to wed a Tarleton, which meant straightforward afternoons were not likely to be a regular feature of his life. He had just begun to find a rhythm, his arms growing accustomed to the flat sweeping motion of swinging the scythe, when Belle came racing, white-faced, towards him, her curls bouncing and her shawl flapping behind her. In some ways, it was almost a relief to find her in the grip of theatricality for, as much as he did not want her to have suffered some kind of upset, she had been oddly subdued since her return to London, while nevertheless insisting she was not. Her silences had made him realise how he had come to take her confidences for granted—to cherish them, even—but he did not think it would help the situation to make demands of her.

Therefore patience. And scything.

“Rufus,” she cried. “I’m so sorry. I’ve done something terrible.”

Since Belle and a sharp implement were unlikely to be a successful combination, he put the scythe aside. “What? Again. How could you.”

“No, no”—she wheezed frantically—“I mean it. I’ve really done something terrible.”

He had been about to suggest some of the potentially terrible things she could have done—committed bigamy, eaten a spider, taken out an advertisement for Valentine’s murder—when he saw how truly distressed she was. Rather than merely dramatically distressed in the usual Tarletonian fashion. “Whatever it is,” he said, determined to prove himself worthy of her faltering trust, “we shall handle it together.”

“Not this. I ... I’ve brought something to you, or upon you, that you may not want, and I ... I meant to talk to you about, but I couldn’t find the right time and now there’s no opportunity—”

“Bellflower, you need to breathe, or you’ll fall over. Have you volunteered me to fuck someone again?”

“I didn’t volunteer you the last time,” she cried. “That’s unfair. You were spontaneously invited , and it had nothing to do with me.”

“And I had a lovely time, so if the Farrows have been once again erotically inspired, I am more than happy to—”

She gave a little scream. “Rufus. It’s not Lord Farrow. It’s ... me. Or rather, it’s not me ... it’s ... well, the truth is, I wrote to your family, and I was going to talk to you about it when they wrote back to see if you wanted ... you wanted to ... write to them and maybe you could forgive them ... but now they’re here. They’re here right now. In the drawing room.”

This was surprising news and, perhaps, secretly a little gratifying because Rufus had not imagined ever being forgiven. Let alone voluntarily visited. “My aunt is in the drawing room? Has she been struck by lightning?”

“Not your aunt.” Belle gazed at him, stricken. “Your parents.”

Two words that tumbled about him, heavy as masonry, robbed of all meaning.

“I wrote to them,” Belle explained, slightly more coherently. “I thought they would write back. But they came straight here instead.”

There was a distant ringing in Rufus’s ears. His mouth tasted of salt and copper. “How did you find them?”

“It wasn’t difficult. Your mother is quite famous.”

“My mother is famous?”

“She’s a model. And an artist in her own right.”

“She’s a model?” For some reason, the only words Rufus could grasp were ones placed immediately in front of him.

“Yes. Rufus, I’m so sorr—”

“And she’s here,” he asked.

“Yes. And your father.”

“My father.”

“Yes. Both your parents.”

He sat down heavily amongst the weeds, unexpectedly comforted by the way the tall stems arched above him and around him, sheltering almost. His eyes drifted up to Belle in helpless anguish. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I do know. But I didn’t know they’d just turn up. Except maybe I should have known that because if I heard of my son for the first time in thirty years, I’d probably just turn up too.”

Rufus put his head in his hands. The whole world drifted around him, flower petal fragments on a wayward breeze. The worst of it was, he was overcome, but he wasn’t surprised. Part of him even wondered if he should have expected this. Seen it coming a mile away. “Why can’t you ever listen? To anyone?”

“I do listen,” Belle protested, and he heard the misery in her voice. “At least, I listen to you. It’s just sometimes ... sometimes you’re misguided. I’m sorry but you are.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to make decisions for me.”

Her foot came down in passionate dismay, mushing a buttercup. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“If you do know that,” he muttered, “your behaviour rarely bears it out.”

“I’m not defending myself, Rufus. I can’t. Because I did a bad thing, and there’s no escaping it. I knew it would make you angry. Possibly make you hate me. But I did it anyway.”

“You’re right,” he said flatly. “You are not defending yourself.”

She knelt down beside him in the dirt, her eyes steady behind a sheen of held-back tears. “I know I’m in the wrong. But I thought the cost was worth it. I still do.”

“That’s not your calculus to perform.”

“I’m not talking about the cost to you. I’m talking about the cost to me.” She put her hand upon his wrist, her fingers chill as bone. “I promise you, I do listen. You’ve told me time and time again that you need a family. And your family has come all this way for you. They love you. They’re desperate to see you.”

He told himself he was furious at her. That he should be furious at her. She’d betrayed him, disregarded him, trampled all over him with her devastating good intentions. But he also recognised, in some distantly inaccessible way, that being angry at Belle felt safe when believing his family might ever have cared for him did not. In that moment, however, some piece of hope, no larger than an ant, broke free from the detritus of grief and fear and shame and proved itself stronger than any of them.

“Really?” he asked.

She nodded solemnly. “Yes. You should go to them.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Rufus ran. He ran, barely even aware of drawing breath, and did not stop until he had reached the drawing room. Half falling through the door, he found within a man and woman, he seated, she restlessly pacing, both of them visibly exhausted from travel. For long, long moments, nothing happened. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The sweat stung the blisters upon Rufus’s hands.

And then the woman—a statuesque beauty, her unbound hair the boldest, most familiar red—was standing before him, her eyes devouring him, as if they could never get their fill of looking. “Rufus.” She turned to the man, who could have been any man except that he was not. “Rufus, he’s my son .”

It was a story told in tears, across hours, between embraces. It was not, in the end, the most important story, for that was not one story, but all the pieces of Rufus himself. Like the heroine of a fairy tale set an impossible task, Belle had gathered them from across the world and plucked them from the depths of his own heart, forgetting not one single speck of dust, and there he was in glittering mosaic. Whole not because of his parents, but for them.

His father had not been the only man to fall in love with his mother—she had been famous even then, beautiful, and scandalous—but he had been the one to marry her. It had cost him everything: his inheritance, his family, his position in society. And, for himself, he regretted none of it, but they had both feared for the child his new wife carried. Theirs seemed too precarious a life; unfair to make their son bear the consequences of choices made before he was born. His father’s sister, now a very wealthy woman, had made promises, so many promises, so many convincing promises. She would raise the child as her own, give it every care, every blessing, every opportunity it could possibly need. Give it time to grow, she suggested, stable and safe, far from the shadow of gossip and disgrace. Let the child decide for itself. And so they agreed—no word from either of them until Rufus was eighteen years old. They were relatively poor in those days, living from hand to mouth, and friend to friend. It had all seemed for the best.

“But we missed you,” Ygraine said. “Every day, we missed you. And every day we thought of you. We had to leave England because it hurt too much, knowing how close you were, and yet lost to us.”

It had never occurred to either of them that Rufus’s sister would not keep her word. That Rufus’s eighteenth birthday would come and go, with no letters given over, no mention of the deal that was struck.

His father shrugged. “We thought you did not want to know us. We thought you were ashamed of us.”

There had already been too much loss—they had already borne too much pain—for Rufus to tell them he had lived so much of his life convinced they were ashamed of him. Besides, these ancient ills felt far away as afternoon slipped into evening. Part of him, yes, but a fading part, as brittle as dry paper, when all about him, a life he had not known to hope for bloomed fearlessly amongst the weeds of the past.

Had the house been even slightly ready for guests, Rufus would have begged his parents to stay. As it was, he begged them to return tomorrow, and need not have begged at all.

“Even if we talked all day and all night for the next ten thousand years,” Ygraine said, as her husband helped her into the carriage, “I will still feel I have barely scraped the surface of everything we have to say.”

Rufus, exhausted, hoarse from weeping, smiled at his mother. “You need to meet my wife. You’ll like her.”

Or they’d murder each other.

But probably not.

His father hugged him one last time—something else Rufus secretly thought he could not take his fill of even in ten thousand years—and then his parents were gone.

Or not gone.

Gone up the road.

Coming back.

As often as he wanted.

For several slow-passing minutes, he simply stood upon the forecourt, watching the now-empty carriageway winding between the trees, his own thoughts a mystery to him. While he had long maintained he would never reach out to his parents of his own volition, he had always on some level believed that knowing them would teach him how to know himself. But it had not. It had opened no doors, explained no riddles, taught no lessons. It had, in fact, changed nothing at all. Well, it had made him happy, though even that did not feel how he might once have imagined it would. Because, he realised with an odd jolt, he already was.

And he found himself wondering if this thing that he’d claimed he never wanted had simply come too late to matter. Except it wasn’t that either. It did matter, it mattered very much. His heart was foolishly full with how much it mattered. So perhaps that was the difference. Being safe enough to brave the possibility of pain. And loved enough to be able to offer love. No longer lost within a life he didn’t know how to live, tormented by needs he didn’t understand how to fulfil, there was space, at last, for joy.

Turning, he made his way back across the bridge. Swallowfield was quiet, but not quiet as it had been upon their arrival. That had been a lonely quiet, a neglected quiet. This was a well-earned quiet. The quiet of a day well spent and a promising tomorrow.

?thelfl?d was nosing into the long grasses that continued to thrive in the still-untamed courtyard, gathering flowers for her pen, something he’d fully believed to be one of Belle’s pig-favouring fantasies until he saw it with his own eyes. Pausing, he snapped off a stem of rosebay willowherb, with its long-tongued purple flowers, and offered it to ?thelfl?d. She was dubious at first but then she took it in her mouth and trotted off with it—though quite why she was so fussy about her own bedroom, he did not know, because she was a master at sneaking into theirs.

Belle was not in the kitchen. Nor in the great hall. He thought she might be with Mr. Smith, but he was in the moat room, reading a letter with such intensity that Rufus thought it best not to disturb him. Probably Belle would head down later and steal his candle until he promised to stop working. Except she was not in the library either.

Nor was she in the bedroom.

Had she gone for a walk? Was she in the bath? Down a mediaeval sewer?

Then he spotted the piece of paper on his pillow. He did not have a good feeling about it. Never in the history of the world had anyone left a note upon a pillow in a mood of contented optimism. Indeed, Asher had once left him such a missive. It had simply read I can’t do this . Therefore, it was with his own mood of contented optimism dissipating around him that Rufus reached for the envelope and ripped it open.

Dearest Rufus,

I hope now you’ve met your parents, you can see you’ve always been loved. That you were always worthy of it. I want you to have the life you’ve always longed for. I want you to pursue the dreams you insisted were impossible. I want you to stop denying yourself what you need and what you deserve. I think you could do that here. Just not when I’m forever standing in the way.

I believe you’ll find your Bonny.

Love always,

Belle

Crumpling the sheet between his fingers, Rufus gave vent to a heartfelt “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

At which point the door flew open with such force it crashed into the wood panelling. “What,” demanded the normally placid Mr. Smith, “have you fucking done.”

Rufus stared, hardly recognising him. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Then why has Bel—Mrs. Tarleton—left us?”

“You can call her Belle. I’m aware you’re fucking. And I don’t know.”

“You must. Because it is for your sake she has gone.”

“Jesus Christ.” Rufus ran his hands through his hair. “I feel like I’m participating, without my consent, in one of those fairground games where you have to bash a rat in a sock.”

Although he had regained his calm somewhat, Mr. Smith was now eyeing him as though he belonged in Bedlam. “What does bashing rats in socks have to do with driving your wife away?”

“Oh, I just meant ... every time I think one aspect of my life is under control, something else goes wrong.”

“I still don’t think you should compare your wife to bashing rats in socks.”

“You’ve met her. She’s exactly like that.” It was slowly beginning to dawn on Rufus that this wasn’t helping the situation. “Look, what did she say to you?”

Mr. Smith’s colour fluctuated slightly. “Some very kind things. But she also said she couldn’t go on being selfish. That she’d taken your happiness from you, was liable to do the same to me, and therefore she was going to live in a villa in Italy.”

Sinking onto the bed, Rufus continued doing violence to his own hair. “I mean, of course. ‘Have a sensible conversation with your husband’”—he briefly let go of his hair in order to make a balancing motion—“‘live in villa in Italy.’ Trust a Tarleton to Tarleton. It is the one great constant of the universe.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Smith, still regarding him warily.

Rufus cast his mind to the conversation in the kitchen garden. He had been shocked and spoken, he would be the first to admit, intemperately, but he didn’t think he’d said anything so terrible it would make his wife spontaneously run away from him. Or rather, this felt like an impulsive reaction to something much deeper. “Neither do I.”

“I also don’t understand why she wouldn’t at least mention feeling like this.”

It was unexpectedly reassuring to witness Mr. Smith’s distress. While he’d given Rufus no reason to complain about his role in the household, Belle’s affection for him had always seemed somewhat incomprehensible. Clearly, though, he cared for her deeply. And that, even beyond Swallowfield, was something he and Rufus had in common. “Because she’s Belle?” he suggested.

“That’s neither answer nor explanation.” Mr. Smith began to pace the bedroom like a wolf separated from its pack. “What did we do? What did I do?”

“Did you quarrel?” asked Rufus, holding, somewhat unfairly, on to the vague hope he could blame Mr. Smith for Belle’s disappearance.

“No.” He shook his head. “She told me once she feared she would disappoint me in some regard, but I don’t believe I have done anything to substantiate such a concern.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not real to her.”

“Do you think I’m not aware of that?” retorted Mr. Smith, with a touch of his former sharpness. “I suppose I hoped that she would come to believe what I said at the time.”

“Which was?”

“Not that it is any of your business, but that I desired nothing from her that she did not wish to give.”

“It might not quite be a matter of wishing .”

One of Mr. Smith’s pale brows arched upwards. “Cryptic.”

“It’s not my place to speak for Belle.”

“Given you have no idea what would cause her to abruptly flee her home, I’m not sure you’re even qualified to.”

Rufus rose, unsure if he was impressed or frustrated when Mr. Smith held his ground. “You forget your place, Mr. Smith.”

“Well, you seem to have forgotten your wife.”

“Are you in love with her?”

At that, Mr. Smith hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “But before you accuse me of ... of anything, Belle has given me no indication that she would welcome that from me.”

“We can’t always control how we feel.”

“No,” conceded Mr. Smith. “But what we have together”—and here a faint, oddly intriguing blush touched his cheeks—“works for both of us. Or so I thought until ...” He broke off, his expression tormented enough to stir Rufus, reluctantly, to guilt.

“At ease, Mr. Smith. I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Mr. Smith brandished his letter. “If I hadn’t done anything wrong, would Belle be attempting to ...” He paused, this time in confusion. “Does she even have a villa in Italy.”

“No. No she does not.”

There was a long silence, Rufus turning the page Belle had left him over and over in his hands, as though he might discover upon the paper some hitherto unnoticed message. The energetic surge of his initial frustration had already ebbed away, leaving only a kind of numbed bewilderment behind. To have regained one family and lost another in the space of an afternoon. It would have been comical if it had not been so devastating.

“If you will allow the question”—Mr. Smith’s tone softened—“and if you are correct that I may not be responsible here, why would Belle say she has, what was it again, taken your happiness from you?”

“Honestly, I have no notion.”

“Well, has Belle taken your happiness from you?”

“What? No.” Rufus glared at him. “Of course not. She is my happiness.”

“And you have, I assume, told her that?”

“I ... well. I think so. I must have?”

The two men exchanged a series of looks, each increasing in gravity and alarm.

“Oh God,” said Rufus. “Get Tom to saddle a horse. You’re in charge of the house. Don’t let anything happen to the damn pig.”

Mr. Smith bristled. “I am quite capable of taking care of ?thelfl?d.”

“Do you have a double first in it?”

“Everyone is very aware”—Mr. Smith’s tone was icy—“that when you’re worried about Belle, you get very unpleasant to be around. May I remind you that, in this instance, the person who has apparently hurt her is you.”

Rufus opened his mouth, intending to deliver the biting put-down this upstart steward deserved. Then realised he was completely correct. “If you had impetuously run off to live in an Italian villa,” he asked instead, “where would you sail from?”

“Most probably I would start by crossing the Channel. So ... Dover?”

“Wonderful.” Flinging off his shirt, Rufus pulled on a slightly cleaner one. “I suppose I am going to Dover.”