Chapter 5
Thomas strode in through the front door of Shawcross Hall, just as he always did. Despite the weeks and weeks of meeting Catherine down by Stromlyn Lake, he still had to fight the urge to come back home more cautiously. He knew, of course, that to be too cautious would be to make himself seem furtive.
“Where have you been?” Pierce came upon him suddenly in the entrance hall as he closed the door behind him.
Thomas was so startled that his mouth fell open, and he stuttered a little before answering.
“Out riding. Why? What is it to you?” He tried to sound annoyed rather than guilty. “And why are you skulking about here pouncing on people?”
“I am not pouncing on people, just you.” Pierce narrowed his dark eyes. “Where did you ride?”
“Out across Colney Beck, why? You ordinarily could not care less where I go.”
“I still do not care, brother. I just wonder where it is you go of late. You seem to be riding out with increasing regularity. Please do not tell me it is the dreary and plain Louisa Ravensthorpe. I do not think Father would like that at all. She has no particular connections and likely would not come with much of a dowry.”
“I think it is a little unfair to call the poor woman dreary and plain.” Thomas was hoping to divert his brother.
He could not imagine that Pierce knew of his special friendship with Catherine Ambrose, for he would surely have mentioned it if he did. Pierce was not a man who could play a long game, and he would have certainly run to their father with that particular news if he had it.
In that respect, Pierce had changed very little since childhood. He was as determined now to win his father’s approval as he had been back then, and Thomas wondered if Pierce would ever grow up enough to realize he was never going to get it.
If the old Duke started bestowing praise, his son would stop trying so hard to win it, and where would be the advantage in that? For a moment, Thomas pitied Pierce and hated their father for how he had raised him.
“Then it is her?” Pierce said a little too gleefully for a man of four-and-twenty. “Father will not be pleased at all.”
“Well, before you go running to him with tales of things that have never happened, let me spare you the trouble of making a fool of yourself and tell you that I was out riding alone. I have no special friendship with Louisa Ravensthorpe; I defend her merely because what you say is so unkind.”
“Unkind?” Pierce scoffed, his dark eyes dancing with the sort of menace that comes over a spiteful boy who is about to pull the wings off a butterfly.
“Yes, unkind.” As much as Thomas was confident Pierce knew nothing, the idea of having to put up with any more of his company just to divert him was insupportable.
“Really, you are the weakest of men,” Pierce scoffed.
“And you are the most underdeveloped.”
“What?”
“That you can find your own humour in childish name calling, playing the superior card because that is the one you have been dealt.”
“You are still jealous that I am to be Duke. After all these years, you cannot take it. You should be used to it by now, being the second son.”
“Oh Pierce, for heaven’s sake.” Thomas shook his head and began to walk away through the immense entrance hall.
He looked up at the dozens of portraits hanging on the wall as he went, many of them former Dukes of Shawcross. He had never, ever wanted to join them in their portraits or their occupation.
“Pierce, look at them.” Thomas stopped, unable to walk away entirely without saying his piece. “Look at the arrogance, the haughty air about them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The old Dukes, my dear brother. The men you follow. Those you will hang alongside in oil on canvas one day in the far-off future.”
“Arrogant, you say?” Pierce was instantly affronted as if the insult had been aimed at him personally.
“Yes, look at them. Every single one has that air of entitlement as if they were born to be where they are.”
“But they were.”
“That is not exactly what I mean.” Thomas thought for a moment and stared up at his grandfather, the man who had begun the feud between their family and the Earl of Barford’s. “As if they are better by dint of where, when, and to whom they were born.”
“They are better. We are better,” Pierce said and gave Thomas such a look of disdain that he immediately realized he was not part of the we who were better.
“But do you not see it is all made up. The title, the whole system; it is a game, a folly of men.”
“What nonsense is this?” Pierce looked angry, and Thomas knew it was simply because he did not understand any of it; Pierce hated to feel a fool.
“To walk through the world as if you own it is to miss so much of what is around you.”
“Nonsense!”
“As you wish,” Thomas said and started to walk away again.
“This is envy, plain and simple.” Pierce came after him, not yet ready to give up the argument.
“I am not envious of you,” Thomas said in a tired, exasperated tone. “I would not be where you are for a Kingdom, never mind a duchy.”
“And why, pray tell, is that?”Pierce followed him all the way into the drawing room.
Thomas had not intended to go there; he was simply trying to get away from Pierce. He was relieved, however, to see that the room was otherwise empty. Had their father been present, Pierce would have made much of it, using everything at his disposal to have the Duke side with him. Not to affect Thomas as its aim, but to satisfy his own need for approval from a man who never bestowed it.
“Because I see the pressure brought to bear upon you, Pierce, and I could not abide it for myself,” Thomas said truthfully.
“You would not be man enough for all of that. It takes a better man to manage it.” Pierce looked self-satisfied as if Thomas had conceded a point.
Pierce had always lagged behind in terms of raw intelligence, and Thomas, every bit as kind as his mother had raised him to be, had never taunted him for it.
“It is not that, Pierce. I could not bear our father’s perpetual interest if I am entirely honest. I could not stand him instructing me on how to be a man in his own image, for I do not like the image of our father.”
“Perhaps I ought to tell him that.”
“Perhaps you ought to grow up. The time for running to father, or nurse, or the governess with tales has long since passed. I do not care to be in competition with you for our father’s good opinion, so you may safely leave me out of things and know that it would not be to your detriment. I am not your competition, am I? As you keep reminding me, you are to be the Duke, and I am not. Can you not just be satisfied with that?”
“I am tired of this conversation now,” Pierce said with a grand air. “I have better things to do than talk nonsense with you, brother.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” Thomas said and smiled before dropping heavily into the armchair nearest the fire.
He heard, rather than saw, his brother leave the room. Such encounters between the two of them had always been very trying but had become a little more so of late. Not because it was all so pointless, and they never resolved anything between them, but because Thomas wished that things were different.
Now, more than ever, he would have liked a brother who was also a friend. A brother he could confide in and know that his most precious information was safe. He would, in short, like somebody on the earth to talk to about Catherine and his hopes and fears for the future. If only he had a brother he could trust, he might be able to say it all out loud; he might have someone who might see things with fresh eyes; an older brother who could advise him sensibly.
And it would have been practical advice too, something which would have suited Pierce to give. Thomas did not need to mull over matters of the heart, nor wonder out loud if the object of his affection returned his love equally. That much he knew for certain.
In the weeks since they had been meeting at Stromlyn Lake, there had been no doubt in his mind that Catherine felt for him what he felt for her. There was none of the dancing around that seemed to be part and parcel of ordinary courtships.
Catherine had once said it was because they were meeting in secret and at great risk to themselves. In those circumstances, it was clear that each would only do so because of their high regard for the other. To have played coy or remain aloof so as not to give away the upper hand seemed ridiculous in the light of such knowledge.
And that was what he loved most about; her wisdom and gentle confidence. Catherine never blushed or giggled. She always looked him right in the eyes and only laughed if she found something truly amusing. There was no veil hiding the true woman behind, just the woman herself.
It had spurred Thomas on to be the same, to only state his true thoughts and opinions and to always be himself entirely. It had been hard at first, for he feared, as all men secretly did, that his own character, just as it was, would never be good enough.
But Catherine had shown him that it was and had shown him almost from the very first. It was their honesty which had likely brought them together so close and so fast. He had been meeting her not three weeks when he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that he was falling in love with her.
And even that seemed like a long time ago; a time when he could still choose to walk away. But that time had passed, and his feelings were so deep now that he could no more walk away than he could will himself to stop breathing.
Catherine had also come to that place in her own feelings, and now, whenever they met, their talk always inexorably turned to the reality of their situation; the truth that they could go no further than they had already gone.
“If we had the luxury of courting in the normal way, Thomas, then we would already be engaged and thinking of our life together,” Catherine had said to him only that morning as they sat on the fallen tree holding hands.
“I know,” he said mournfully, feeling what had become a customary sadness surround him like a cloak. “I think of it all the time.”
“It has made our meetings a little sad, Thomas.”
“But there is still good in it. There is still love, and I still suffer the same glorious excitement as I ride across Colney Beck, knowing I will be with you in minutes. I could not bear to lose you now, even if this is all we ever have.”
“Thomas, I am not leaving you. I would never, ever leave you.” Catherine had become a little tearful, although she was strong and did not allow the tears to fall. “Not willingly,” she finished, and he felt his heart sink.
“Has something happened?” He did not need to elaborate further.
They had often talked of how suddenly either one of them might be forced into matrimony with a spouse of their fathers’ choosing. At first, it had been a lighthearted thing; just something else the two excited young friends had in common.
But as their love had grown, it had become something to be feared. It was the spectre at the feast, ever present, however much one tried to ignore it.
“No, I have heard nothing of any plans of my father’s. But that is not to say he does not make them, for I am sure I would be the last person to hear of it. I have asked Philip from time to time, but I would not want him to grow suspicious of my perpetual questions.”
“Do you really think your father would leave it so long before telling you? I think he does not have any plan at all. At least we can hope for that much.”
“Yes, we can hope. But you must remember that the first I had heard of his intention to marry me away to Francis Mortimer was the morning he had decided to call it off. Before that, I had no knowledge whatsoever.” She had squeezed his hand and turned mournful eyes upon him. “It is not because my father seeks to keep things secret from me, Thomas; it is simply a fact that he thinks it none of my business in the first place. It is not as if he will ask for my opinion or give me the final say on any match he has planned. It is not even a consideration, and he would scoff at the idea of including me in such things.”
“I despise him,” Thomas said truthfully. “I despise them both.”
“Do not let their behaviour taint your soul, Thomas. You are too perfect, too wonderful for that.” Her hazel eyes fixed his, and he felt lost in them for a moment as if none of the rest of it were real somehow.
Her hair, free from the blue bonnet he liked so much, lifted in the breeze, its soft tendrils swaying gently around her face. He reached out to touch her smooth, creamy skin, and when she smiled at him with so much love, he pulled her to him and kissed her.
It was a simple kiss, nothing too passionate that might have frightened her or turned her away from him, but it was the most wonderful thing, nonetheless.
“You are the perfect one, my love,” he said when he drew away.
As he had ridden back the way he always went, Thomas had thought of nothing but the kiss. It really had been wonderful, and yet, at the same time, it seemed to fill him with such great sadness. It was like a beautiful reminder of everything they were denied; the life that could never be theirs.
With a sigh, Thomas stared into the flames of the fire. How glad he was that Pierce had been diverted on this occasion, but he knew he would have to be more and more careful. If Stromlyn Lake were all they could ever have, he would do nothing to see that taken away from them.