Chapter 8
Some days later, Catherine was sitting alone in the breakfast room staring at the small patch of peeling green paint and wondering if she would be able to eat a single bite of the food she had laid out on her plate.
The closer it was coming to the time for her to leave Barford Hall forever, the more she began to take notice of her day-to-day life there. This was to be her last but one breakfast in that room, and she very much doubted that she could manage a single thing the following day before leaving.
“It is only me,” Philip said gently when he walked in through the door causing her to look up sharply. “Fear not, our father is still in his bed and likely will be for some time yet. He filled himself with strong liquor last night after dinner.”
“Pity he does not drink himself to death,” Catherine said angrily and was true to say that she meant it wholeheartedly.
“Perhaps one day he shall,” Philip said and smiled before sitting down next to her.
“Are you not eating, Philip?” she said and looked over at the heavily laden sideboard of platters of hot breakfast food.
“Forgive me, Catherine, but as the time draws near for you to leave, the fact is I cannot eat at all.”
“Philip, you must not make yourself ill over it all. I could not bear it.”
“I cannot bear any of this, Catherine,” he said, and she looked at his young, handsome face and felt her heart break to see his eyes filling with tears. “I cannot bear the thought that I will never see you again.”
“We will see each other again, Philip. Our day will come.”
“Only when he is dead,” Philip said firmly. “He will not relent in this, Catherine. He is most determined, even all these days later, that you will not be welcome under this roof again. And he has demanded that I cut all ties with you, refusing to give me the address to which he sends you.”
“Then you cannot even write to me? I am to be completely removed from my family then, am I?”
“I will do everything in my power to find out where this aunt lives. Believe me that I will not rest until I have sent my first letter to you.”
“I do not know how you are to achieve such a thing, Philip. Neither one of us even knew that father had a sister in the North, nor even what her name is. She might well not even be an Ambrose, for it seems likely that she would be married.”
“I will not rest until I find it, even if I have to search through Father’s study. It must be written down there somewhere, in an old letter or something of that nature. He must surely have maintained some contact with his sister over the years to be able to write to her with the news that he was sending you to Derbyshire. Since you are going, it is clear that she has written back and agreed to it all.”
“I wonder what Derbyshire is like,” Catherine said miserably. “I wonder if it is as pretty as Hertfordshire.”
“I am told that the peak country is very beautiful,” Philip said in an attempt to cheer her. “Perhaps you will get to explore a little.”
“And perhaps I will be kept a prisoner by an evil aunt. Perhaps I am only being sent to her because she is cruel and our father thinks that a fitting punishment for one such as me.”
“Catherine, there is no reason to think that our aunt is cruel.”
“She is our father’s sister, Philip. If she is even just a little like him, that will be too much to bear. To be separated from you only to find that I am to be kept a prisoner in the North and treated cruelly by my father’s sister will be more than I can manage. It is all too much, you see. The punishment does not fit the crime because, in the end, there is no crime. As much as I am in pain for all that is to come, I am more in pain for what I am to lose. And I include Thomas in that, and I always shall. His loss is as great a blow to my heart as the loss of you is, and that is my crime. Falling in love is my crime. But the awful thing is, the evil, vile thing is, that Thomas and I were kept apart by two angry, spiteful old men. None of this need have been, none of it.”
“I know, and I do not blame you for any of it.”
“Even when you tried to warn me?”
“I only warned you because I did not want you to come to harm. But there is no blame in any of this unless it is towards our father. He is, in everything, to be blamed. I thought I despised him before, but I cannot have done so for what I feel now is truly almost murderous. I will never forgive him for what he is doing to you, for in doing it he is hurting me also.”
“I cannot bear to think of you here alone with him, living day after day with just his company here.”
“I will survive it, Catherine. My loathing and anger will be my constant companions; they will keep me going.”
“Oh, Philip, do not let him harden your heart. You are a good man, a tender-hearted human being, and it would finish me entirely if that changed.”
“My heart will remain tender in all the important ways, I promise.” He smiled and lowered his voice to a whisper. “In fact, in one very important way.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will not leave Hertfordshire without saying goodbye to Thomas Carlton,” Philip said in a voice that was barely audible.
“I am to have a final meeting with Thomas?” she said, her eyes filling with grateful tears. “But where? When?”
“I managed to get a message to Thomas asking him to meet me. It was not an easy thing for him because his father has also been made aware of your friendship,” Philip said, and she wondered once again who it was had given them away. “But he met me nonetheless, and I told him of your plight. It is true to say that the devastation I saw upon his face was not only genuine but gut-wrenching. If you never have a moment’s love again in this life, know that you had the very best from Thomas Carlton. I could see it.”
“Oh, Philip. If only things could have been different.”
“He knows that tonight is your last night here, his only chance to say goodbye.” Philip looked instinctively over his shoulder only to find that they were still alone. “I have shown him the best way to come into the estate at night, and I have seen to it that the door to the unused lodge is unlocked. I will help you get out of the house when it is dark, and you may spend whatever time you care to in his company. I will not hover, and I will not wait for you; you must make your own way back to the house.”
“I have no fear of it, Philip. I have no fear of making my way back in. As long as I can get to the lodge and spend my last hours there with him, I ask for nothing else in this life.”
And so it was, a little after midnight, that Philip came to her chamber and found her sitting fully dressed, waiting for her opportunity.
They crept through the house hand-in-hand and, finally finding themselves outside, tore off across the grounds at a run, not stopping until they had reached the cover of the trees beyond. When they finally reached the deserted little lodge that was in such great need of repair, she stopped and gripped Philip’s hand once again.
“Is he here?” she said, feeling the very worst of her fears and imagining that Thomas had never made it out of Shawcross Hall at all.
“Yes, I can see the vaguest light through the window, look,” he said and pointed. “He has a candle.”
“Philip, I cannot thank you enough for this. My heart shall break anyway, but perhaps the break will be all the easier for having been able to say goodbye. I shall never forget what you have done for me this night.”
“Go on inside, sister. Take this last slice of happiness, and do not waste a moment of it,” he said and kissed her forehead before turning to leave.
She let herself into the little lodge and stood as still as a statue for a moment simply staring at Thomas. And Thomas, for his part, seemed also to be rooted to the spot, unable to move as he stared at her helplessly.
“Thomas, I am so very sorry,” she said and, before she had even finished speaking, he had crossed the room and pulled her into his arms.
“There is nothing on this earth for you to be sorry for, Catherine. You have done nothing wrong, neither one of us has.” He held her tightly to him, and she felt safe for the first time in days. “I just cannot bear this, Catherine. I cannot think how to go on with life here in Hertfordshire without you.”
“Then Philip has told you that I am to go to Derbyshire to live with my aunt?” she said, sniffing loudly as her tears flowed.
“He has, although he declares he does not know where exactly.”
“It is true, neither one of us even knew that my father had a sister.” She sniffed. “And what of you? What is your father going to do? Please tell me that he is not going to punish you as mine is punishing me?”
“He has discovered that you are to be sent away, Catherine, and he is pleased in the knowledge that that is punishment enough. There could be no greater punishment to give me than to deny me your society. To live without your beautiful face and your wonderful, wise words, is as a death sentence to me. What more could my father do? And I think he knew it. It is enough to him that I am broken.”
“You must not be broken, Thomas. You are young, and you have a life ahead of you. You must not allow bitterness to take you, not ever. Do not let it fester in your heart as our fathers have done for so many years; as their fathers before them did. We are different, Thomas. Have we not proved that by getting this far?”
“Yes, we have. We have lived these last months in love, and there is nothing more wonderful in the world than that. I cannot believe that I had become discontent; that I wanted so much more, especially now when I would give my last drop of blood to be able to go on as we were forever. How content I would be now with just one meeting a week, just an hour of your company. It is true that we do not ever know what it is we have until it is taken away from us. How precious that time was, Catherine. I will never regret these last months with you, for they have been the only days of my life to make sense to me, to feel real and true.”
“If only it could have gone on forever, Thomas. If only we could have been left in peace to continue in our secretive world. If only we had not been given away. And even now, I do not know who did it.”
“It was my own brother, Pierce,” Thomas said flatly. “He has mistrusted me for some while, and I did not credit him with any intelligence at all. But he has carefully followed me, intent upon discovering the truth. It was my brother who wrote to your father to give him the news and my brother who spoke to my own father on that same day.”
“But why would he do such a thing?”
“It is hard for you to understand, given that your own brother is such a fine man. But my brother is weak and clamours daily for our father’s approval. This was not so much to spite me as to win him the regard of my father. And even in that, he has failed, for my father treats him the same as he ever did.”
“Then it was all for nothing,” Catherine said and fought hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Let us not talk about our families for a moment longer. Let us not waste these last hours together, my darling Catherine. I will be gone from here before the sun comes up, as you must be. Let us spend this time speaking of the day when we will be reunited, for one day, let us hope, that will come.”
“It is a wonderful dream, Thomas, and is something I will hold tightly to in my darkest hours. Even though we shall be parted by so many miles, by so much rough ground, when I close my eyes at night, I will see your face. I will imagine you as if you are as close to me as you are now, and in my heart, you will be.”
“And I will do the same, Catherine, and that way we shall be together in our hearts forever.”