Chapter Forty-Nine
DAMON ARRIVED IN EAST Sussex to an empty house, no butler at the door, no one in the halls. What the devil had happened here? But then a young maid ran from the back of the house, ignoring him, and went out the front door, which he’d left open.
Incredulous, he followed her outside and called, “Wait! Where is everyone?”
The girl paused long enough to turn and say, “At the family cemetery, sir. Our lady is being buried today. If you’ve come for the funeral to pay your respects, you may still be in time. I overslept!”
She ran on and disappeared around the side of the large mansion. Damon didn’t move, felt poleaxed. Now he’d never be able to catch his grandmother at a lucid moment so she could answer his questions. That hope was gone forever. He wished he’d gotten here sooner. But it had taken a week in Jamaica to get his father settled in a new plantation, then Damon had spent another week in London trying to see Jack. But every time he knocked on the door to her house in Berkeley Square, one of two butlers—they really did have two—slammed the door shut. Only the first time, after he’d given his name, was he told, “Cap’n’s orders, you ain’t welcome.” They wouldn’t even take the flowers he’d brought her, so he’d had someone else deliver them, but they wouldn’t accept those, either!
He’d still kept an eye on her house, hoping to catch her when she left it, but she never did. He was going to have to try something more drastic when he returned to London, even if it meant confronting her father. There would be no pleasantness this time with that man—well, there never had been, but Malory’s boon was over and he’d made it absolutely clear that Damon couldn’t have his daughter.
But Damon was prepared to brave anything for her—if she would have him. He just needed a chance to speak to her without her father in attendance, to tell her he hadn’t been teasing when he’d asked her to marry him. He should have admitted it that day on his ship, but she’d seemed so annoyed at the idea. Would she still be? Was there really no hope of his ever making her his wife?
He knew where the cemetery was, on both sides of the small chapel beyond the tall hedges at the side of the house. The chapel spire could be seen above the hedges, which is how he’d found out it was there. He’d investigated it just once, fearing he’d find his mother’s grave in there, but he didn’t.
He hurried to the chapel, but when he passed through the fancy entrance cut into the tall hedges, he was surprised by the number of vehicles on the other side. So many people were there, standing outside the small chapel and coming out of it—servants, tenants, local gentry, even that solicitor, Mr. Harrison, who’d tracked him down and was the only person there whom he’d ever spoken to at length.
The coffin was already being carried out of the chapel. He’d missed the service, but at least he could see Agatha Reeves buried. She might have called him by a half dozen wrong names, thinking he was other men she knew, but she’d still been his grandmother, and he wished he could have known her when she’d still had all of her faculties.
A grave had already been dug in the side yard next to the chapel, branches of an oak tree shading it and flowers planted all around it. If not for the gravestones, a visitor might have thought this private family cemetery was a pretty garden. Only Reeveses were buried here. He noticed one grave that was nearly a century old as he slowly followed the procession.
While the coffin was being lowered into the open grave, he moved to stand next to Mr. Harrison, a middle-aged man with brown muttonchops and friendly green eyes. He had offices in the nearby town of Hastings.
Damon nodded a greeting and asked quietly, “How did she die? Peacefully?”
“I’m sorry to say it was likely a painful death.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Well, there’s no telling at what point she died on her fall down those stairs. I was told that a footman was helping her down them, but Lady Reeves thought he was her husband and then recalled her husband was dead. She screamed dreadfully as she tried to get away from the imagined ghost, and then—she tumbled backward.” Harrison sighed. “Nasty business, when your mind plays tricks on you like that. But I’m glad you’re here. I wasn’t sure if you were even in the country. I heard you sent word to Lady Reeves that you were returning to the West Indies. It meant nothing to her, but Mrs. Wright let me know. Such a busybody that woman, but utterly devoted to her mistress.”
“I returned a week ago. I had no idea my grandmother died”—Damon waved his hand at the coffin—“until just now.”
“My condolences, sir. But we will need to speak at the house later. Your grandmother made her will years ago, before her affliction, when she was of sound mind. She excluded the members of her family from whom she was estranged, namely her uncle by marriage and her daughter.”
“Agatha was estranged from my mother? Good God, man, you didn’t think that was something I should know?” No wonder the housekeeper had been so nasty to him!
Mr. Harrison shrugged. “I was the family solicitor, but I didn’t know them well and certainly wasn’t privy to their secrets. It could have been no more than a mother-daughter tiff that never got resolved. But those were Lady Reeves’s instructions when she made the will. She didn’t specify you in the will, but she didn’t exclude you either, so as her closest living relative, her worldly goods are now yours. It’s a long list, mostly properties, even a small castle in Scotland. Oh, and a house in London.”
“Empty?”
“No. It had been her mother’s house. Lady Reeves didn’t stay there often and probably hadn’t been there in years, but a few servants were retained in case she did want to use it.”
He’d rather have Agatha back than another inheritance. “She was Scottish?”
“Her ancestors were, and not to speak ill of the dead, but I always wondered if that was where she got her inflexible disposition.”
“You said she had an uncle?”
“Well, yes, though I doubt he is still alive. He was her husband’s uncle.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before when I asked you if I had any other relatives?”
“Because Lady Reeves warned me never to mention his name on threat of dismissal. He was estranged, after all, from both her and her father-in-law.”
“Why?”
“I asked once and got fired for it. It took months of profuse apologies from me to be reinstated, and I never questioned the lady again. But Giles Reeves would be your great-great-uncle on the paternal side of this family, the older brother of your great-grandfather, whose estate you now own. As I said, I highly doubt he still lives.”
The chaplain had begun saying prayers over the open grave. Damon noticed Mrs. Wright, Agatha’s disagreeable housekeeper, standing on the other side of the grave, crying. Damon moved to stand next to her, facing the chapel.
Agatha had been sixty at least, but Mrs. Wright was younger by some ten years. No gray was in her brown hair yet, but her austere demeanor made her look as old as his grandmother. She’d been his grandmother’s housekeeper for several decades. She might even have worked here when his mother still lived here, but that was just one of the many questions she’d refused to answer for him, so he wasn’t sure.
She was the only one left who might be able to tell him if his mother had ever come back here after she’d left Jamaica and where she was now. He’d ridden to Port Antonio as Malory had suggested and had learned the harbor did keep records, but unless his mother had given a false name, there was no record of her booking passage on any ships leaving from there the year she’d left home or any year after that. He’d visited the inns near the port in case she’d stayed at one, but they didn’t keep records that dated that far back. He’d even checked Port Antonio’s cemetery. It had been a wasted trip.
He wasn’t sure what to say to Mrs. Wright when it had been so apparent on his earlier visits that she disliked him. Perhaps he could begin by reassuring her that she could keep her job if her disposition would improve.
“Come for even more gains?” was whispered spitefully.
“What the devil does that mean?”
“For someone who didn’t know this family at all, you have gained from it rather substantially.”
He turned to face her and said just as quietly, “I would rather have gotten to know my grandmother, to have had at least one damn conversation with her where she didn’t think she was talking to someone else of her acquaintance. Do you honestly think I’m glad about her death?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? She would have hated you as much as she did your mother—if she even knew you existed, but she didn’t.”
“Why would she hate me?”
The woman clamped her mouth shut. He’d seen her do that before. It meant she wasn’t going to say another bloody word. She was beyond infuriating!
He tried to curb his anger, but his voice was still sharp when he told her, “I’m not going to fire you, despite your disagreeable nature, but I do insist you tell me what you have against me, and whatever it is, it needs to end now.”
“I would as soon leave your employ.”
“Just to avoid telling me the truth?”
“Neither you nor your mother were ever to be welcomed here,” Mrs. Wright hissed at him. “She came and wasn’t let in the door.”
He sucked in his breath and demanded, “My mother came here? When?!”
“Many years ago, but as I said, she was turned away at the door.”
“As I would have been? Because grandmother couldn’t remember her own daughter?”
“Oh, no, that was before Lady Reeves started to forget the people she knew. My lady was not a forgiving woman.”
“What did my mother do to cause such strong antipathy that it would be extended to me?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Bloody hell, I told you before I don’t know where she is and you wouldn’t tell me!”
Mrs. Wright looked behind him. “I suppose she read of my lady’s passing in the newspapers.”
Damon immediately swung around. Another carriage had just arrived, and a well-dressed middle-aged gentleman was stepping down from it. He was tall, black haired, and had an air of importance about him. The woman with him pulled the black veil down from her hat to cover her face before she took the hand he offered to assist her to the ground. But Damon saw her face in the moment before she covered it. She was still beautiful despite the years. He’d cherished that face his whole life.
He felt such a welling of emotion, he wasn’t sure he could move, but it shattered when he heard Mrs. Wright nastily say, “If she thinks she can get in the house now, she can’t. I know my lady’s wishes—”
“Shut up, Mrs. Wright. You’re fired.”
He approached the couple and stepped in front of them, blocking their way. But standing this close to his mother, words failed him. He thought he’d never see her again! And she was crying quietly. Did she still love the woman who wouldn’t even speak to her and had struck her from her will? She must. The bad feelings had apparently all been on Agatha’s side.
But his mother’s escort drew his own conclusions about Damon’s standing in their way and said sharply, “If you think you can stop her from attending the funeral—”
Damon threw up a hand to halt the diatribe. He didn’t even look at the man, couldn’t take his eyes off Sarah, his mother. But he realized she must have brought a solicitor with her, thinking she would be prevented from seeing her own mother buried. An understandable assumption when she hadn’t been let in the bloody house when she’d come here before.
He wanted to draw her close, give her a thousand missed hugs, but breathless, all he could do was say, “Mother.”
She said nothing, and through the veil he thought he saw an expression of curiosity on her face. Oh, God, she didn’t recognize him. Of course she wouldn’t! She hadn’t seen him since he was a child.
The solicitor hesitantly asked, “Damon Ross?”
His mother collapsed in a faint.
Damon leapt forward to catch her, but so did her escort. It was an awkward moment, but at least they kept her from falling to the ground.
Alarmed, Damon told the man, “Step aside,” as he picked his mother up in his arms.
“Put her back in the carriage,” the man suggested. His proprietary manner was beginning to annoy Damon.
“Is something wrong with her that I should know?”
“No—just shock, I would imagine. She was told you were dead.”