Chapter Two
Standing in the midst of the great hall of Castle Black, there was no memory, no stirring of old feelings or sense of déjà vu. He stood there as a stranger might, slightly awed by the scale of the thing, but the kinship he’d thought to feel was simply absent. The stone walls, great and imposing, seemed to mock him. Who was he to stand there but a worthless sea dog, tossed from one ship to the next since he’d been discovered? His recollection of any time prior to that was simply gone.
Taking another glance around, he wondered what his reception would be. The ornately carved coat of arms, flanked by medieval weapons he had no name for, loomed above him. Would they call him an imposter? Could he even adequately defend his position that he was not? He was not entirely certain he believed it himself.
“Forgive me, sir—er, my lord,” the butler said as he came back into the great hall from what he could only presume was the dining room. “Allow me to show you into the drawing room. Her ladyship is quite overcome and will need to recover from the shock before she can see you.”
He frowned at that. “Is she in poor health?” It was only natural to think that his return, if he was, in fact, the Lost Lord of Castle Black as the news sheets had styled it, would be upsetting or shocking. He did not want it to do irreparable harm, however.
The butler appeared scandalized at the very mention of it, as if asking such a personal question were somehow a violation of etiquette. Perhaps it was. The rules of polite society were not something that had been of paramount importance in his life for almost two decades. Survival, keeping his feet on the deck and the flogger off his back had been his primary goals in life. They’d hardly left time for him to be concerned with such niceties.
“I couldn’t say, my lord,” the butler answered stiffly. “Please, follow me.”
Graham didn’t. He was testing himself as much as the servants who watched him as if he were some ephemeral apparition in their midst. Instead, he stalked past the butler and headed down the hall. Unerringly, he opened the door to the drawing room and stepped inside, leaving a bevy of stunned servants in his wake. None of them were more surprised than he himself was. It could very well have blown up in his face to head out on his own without guidance from the butler. The simple truth was, he’d been testing himself. He’d wanted to know if he could truly find his way on his own. It gave him more faith in the claim he was making. Behind him, he could hear the servants’ whispers.
“He knew which door it was!” one of the footmen muttered, his voice awed and his whisper more theatrical than secretive.
“Could it be him, do you think?” an astonished maid replied. Clearly, the speculation amongst the servants would run rampant.
Graham turned, casting a hard gaze into the hallway beyond the door, directly at the servants. They scattered like scared rats. Perhaps he was a lord, after all. He’d known where to go without being told and he’d managed, with nothing more than a look, to send servants into a tizzy. It seemed a good tiding at least, assuming that his presence and claim to the title didn’t send the woman who might be his mother to her deathbed.
Realizing that he was being watched, his every move catalogued by servants no doubt hidden behind every access panel and secret door to the damned room, Graham decided that he should at least attempt to look like a gentleman. Crossing to a small settee, he eyed the delicate looking piece of furniture with trepidation. He’d fall arse over tit if he sat in it, no doubt, and it would be good for naught but kindling after. So, he didn’t sit. Watched or not, he had no wish to make a fool of himself. But being idle was not something he was accustomed to.
So he paced—the length of the room and back. Occasionally, he altered direction simply for a change. All the while, his eyes were scanning every stick of furniture, every painting on the wall or vase on a table, in the hopes that something would seem familiar to him. None of it did. Yet despite that, he didn’t feel out of his element or as if he didn’t belong. From the moment he’d entered the county, he’d had a strange sense of belonging, of connectedness. It was something he’d never felt in any port he’d sailed into over the years. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but the countryside and the rush of the sea only a short distance away had given him a sense of, sentimental as it was to say, homecoming.
Nonetheless, he was disappointed. He’d come to Castle Black convinced that his arrival there would somehow unlock his frozen memories, that it might close the gaping black chasms in his mind. But it had been a fool’s errand. His earliest memory remained of being aboard a ship, his skin burned from the sun and a thirst upon him that still made his throat ache when he recalled it. Dressed in clothing too fine, even ruined as it was, to be a servant or a farmer, he’d been taken on as cabin boy and, at the very least, given shelter and food, even if he had worked for it like a dog.
A commotion from the corridor halted his pacing and his frustrated reminiscence. Squaring his shoulders, he faced the door and waited for what would surely be a bevy of accusations. He could not have been more wrong.
The woman who burst into the room, her gray hair swept back into a soft chignon, took one look at him and cried out. “Oh, dear heavens… it’s you. It really is you! Graham!”
“I am Lord Graham Blakemore,” he said stiffly. It was still an odd thing to hear roll from his tongue. Graham, yes. He’d carried that moniker all along. When he’d remembered nothing else, he’d remembered that. The surname and the title were recent memories, if they were memories at all and not simply a result of seeing some random news sheet recycling the story of the Lost Lord. It still seemed ludicrous to him and, yet, here he was, seemingly accepted by them as their missing lord.
“Let us not jump to conclusions, Lady Agatha,” a man near his own age admonished none too gently as he stepped in from the hall. “We have yet to ascertain if he speaks the truth!”
“Why would he lie?” Lady Agatha demanded as she stepped even closer to him. The woman swayed alarmingly on her feet, as if she might fall into a faint. Somehow, she pushed on and closed the distance between them until she could reach out, grasp his hand and draw it to her face. Tears flowed freely over her slightly-lined cheeks as she wept silently. Her hold on him was fierce, as if she feared he would vanish again if she were to let go for even a second.
“For the title. The estate. For any number of reasons,” the man continued. His tone was abrupt, dismissive and very disrespectful. Instantly, it set Graham’s teeth on edge. “Let us ask the pertinent questions, at least, before you grant him keys to the castle!”
“What pertinent questions might those be?” Graham demanded. His speech lacked the perfect diction of the gentleman’s. It was rougher, his accent sharpened by the men he’d sailed with, caroused with, drank with. He sounded more like a sailor than a lord, but for the authoritative tone he managed to muster.
The door opened again and Graham’s gaze was instantly glued to the young woman who entered. As she stepped closer, he realized she was not as young as he had first thought. Not thirty, if he had to guess, but not far from it. She would certainly have qualified as a spinster. Based on her dress and the severe styling of her hair, he could only assume that was the case. Despite the severity of her dress, she was pretty. Not beautiful in the soft, classical sense that was in fashion, but there was a kindness to her face that struck him, a gentleness in the curve of her cheek and the soft pout of her bottom lip. A vision entered his mind of a young, dark-haired girl in the middle of a field, twirling and twirling in a bed of wildflowers until it made him dizzy. Abruptly, he turned his gaze away.
“Graham, you remember Beatrice?” the woman beside him asked hopefully.
“I do not, Madame. I have many gaps in my memory. It is only recently that I even recalled my full name and that it was here at Castle Black that I belonged,” he admitted hesitantly. His voice sounded stiff and his words clipped as he uttered them. Would they toss him out now? Deem him an imposter or an adventurer and put him on the road once more?
“Can you tell me what happened to you? We lost sight of you when they had to cut loose the longboat we were in… the ship went down and—” Her voice broke and she began to weep softly.
Uncertain of what to do, Graham looked around the room for some assistance, for a face that did not wear a mask of suspicion and animosity at the very least. He sought out the young woman, Beatrice. She was looking at him with concern and possibly suspicion as well, but concern had taken precedence. She stepped forward and placed her hands on Lady Agatha’s shoulders.
“Come, we’ll sit and he can tell us all that he remembers… and perhaps we can share with him those things that he cannot. You are tired and overwrought, Lady Agatha. Please,” the woman implored.
Lady Agatha nodded and allowed the woman, Beatrice, he reminded himself, to escort her to the settee. They both sank gracefully onto the surface and then turned expectant faces in his direction.
“Edmund,” Lady Agatha stated. “Fetch a comfortable chair for Graham that he might sit close to me and tell me all!”
“Am I his servant now? Look at him!” Edmund snapped, spittle flying from his purpled face. “He’s no gentleman… not by birth or rearing. It’s obvious to anyone who dares to see or speak the truth that this is all a sham!”
Lady Agatha squared her shoulders and said in a stern tone that brooked no argument, “Edmund, you will do as I ask and you will keep your suspicions and your opinions to yourself until we have had an opportunity to hear him out. I am sure that all can be explained in time. Fetch him a chair or leave.”
“He is right to question my presence here, to doubt my story,” Graham said. “I cannot offer proof of my identity. No one can.”
Lady Agatha smiled sadly. “My dear boy, you need not offer proof beyond your visage. For you are the image of my dear Nicholas, a man more kind and forgiving, more loving and merciful than I deserved,” she replied, her voice trembling with emotion. “I knew the instant I laid eyes on you that you were a Blakemore. You could be nothing else.”
“He could be a by-blow… Lord Nicholas was a wonderful man, but still a man with a man’s needs. His fidelity or lack thereof will not change that,” Edmund corrected her, as if tossing out the possibility of her husband’s infidelity were not a grievous offense.
Beatrice glared at him. “Were you not supposed to fetch a chair and keep quiet?”
Graham tensed as Edmund took a step forward, a murderous glint in his eyes as he glared at Beatrice. Unconsciously, he placed himself between them, his protective instincts alerted by Edmund’s menacing posture and the cruel twist of the man’s sullen mouth.
“Edmund! Do as you are told,” Lady Agatha stated again. “Or go back to London. I’ll not have this house turned into a war zone by you with your ugly suspicions and accusations. If we are as near destitute as you say, then having your wife singlehandedly drain our wine cellars surely has not helped!”
“I cannot condone this, Lady Agatha… we have no proof that this man is who he says he is. I will not sit idly by while you give him free rein to ruin this family’s finances! I will notify the solicitors in London at once, as well as the bankers. He will bleed you dry if you let him!” Edmund insisted.
Lady Agatha sighed wearily, her exhaustion evident in the slumping of her delicate shoulders. “Leave us, Edmund, and do what you must. What care I for matters such as money when my son has returned to me?”
Graham watched as the man turned on his heels and stormed out. Instantly, the room altered, the very air changed in his absence. Everyone, it seemed, breathed a sigh of relief when he departed.
“Is he always like that?” Graham asked.
“Sadly, yes.”
The response had come from Beatrice. Turning back to her, Graham noted that the she was more relaxed and at ease. It softened her features, taking her from simply pretty to something else altogether. It was a dangerous thing when a woman became more appealing every time you looked at her.
“You must tell me where you’ve been all this time,” Lady Agatha said, once again reaching for his hand.
It was a strange thing for him. He was unaccustomed to a tender touch. Still, he tolerated it and steeled himself against the strange stirrings inside him. He wanted to be Lord Blakemore and it had nothing to do with money or titles or living in a fine castle. He wanted to be Lord Blakemore because, at long last, he wanted to belong somewhere, to feel a connection to another human being. Crossing the room, he gathered a sturdy looking chair from near the window and carried it over, seating himself close enough to Lady Agatha that she would not have to crane her neck to see him.
“I’ve been at sea, Madame… I was found in a longboat, badly sunburned, nearly dead from thirst.”
She made a sound of distress and Graham realized that, for the sake of her well-being, he would not be able to tell his entire story. It would have to be carefully edited. Her face had paled at his words and she appeared to grow even smaller, sinking in upon herself.
“I was rescued by a kindly sea captain and his crew. I could not tell them more than my first name… Graham was all that I could recall. I had been struck on the head,” he added. “Possibly when the first ship went down. They kept me on board, made me cabin boy. I was taught a trade, how to sail, and that is what I have done since.”
“Were you never able to see the news sheets or announcements that we made about your disappearance?” Lady Agatha asked. “We searched for you, my darling! To the ends of the earth, I had thought.”
“No, my lady, I did not see them,” he answered, being as honest as he could without upsetting her further. “The ship I was on sailed to the Indies. I was there for some time, going from port to port. Then we sailed to the Americas, to Canada even. When we did return to England… well, men who have been at sea for some time have little interest in news sheets.”
She ducked her head. “They would not. Of course. But they were good to you? Kind? Please tell me that you did not suffer more?”
“They were good to me and kind,” he lied. “I was given all that I needed to survive.” That much was at least true. He’d been fed and sheltered. He’d learned to fight for what he needed and to defend his life if need be. He’d learned how to take a beating and not let it break him. But there was no need to share such with her when she clearly did not have the strength to hear it.
“Lady Agatha,” Beatrice said, “I know you’re tired. And I’m sure that Lord Graham is very tired, as well, from his journey. Let us show him to a room to be settled for the night and then get you to bed.”
Graham noted the gentleness of her tone, the way she was so very caring toward the woman. It baffled him that people should be so good to one another when it was not something he had anything more than a passing familiarity with himself.
“I am tired, but also filled with joy you cannot possibly understand, Beatrice. I would sit here with him all night. I must know everything about your life, how you’ve fared without your family to care for you,” she insisted.
Graham studied her carefully. Her skin was pale to the point of translucency. There were dark hollows beneath her eyes and she was desperately thin. While her eyes shone brightly with her joy, her appearance otherwise betrayed the weaknesses of her body. “There would be little to tell of interest, Madam, and most of it unfit for the ears of ladies,” he replied. “The crew I sailed with, though they took me in, was a rough lot. And I grew to be as rough as they were. I would not say more to you than that.”
“If you will not go to bed for your own sake, Lady Agatha,” Beatrice said, “Let us do so for poor Graham. This must be terribly overwhelming to return here and have us all descend upon him with our questions and, sadly, our accusations.”
It wasn’t so exhausting but, at the young woman’s imploring look, he knew precisely what she wanted. If he claimed fatigue, Lady Agatha would relent. And given the woman’s state, as she was clearly unwell, it would be selfish of him to not go along.
“I am quite tired from the journey, but you may rest easy, Lady Agatha, that I have no intention of leaving Castle Black. We will have all the time needed to share our stories,” he assured her.
“But the master’s chamber is not ready!” Lady Agatha cried. “What a poor welcome you’ve had!”
“On the contrary,” he disagreed. “I feel very welcomed, indeed. And any room will do… I daresay even your basest room will be far beyond any luxury that I can recall.”
“That will change,” Lady Agatha vowed. “You shall be restored to your rightful place as the Lord of Castle Black. I promise you, my son. It will all be right. I promise.”
Graham said nothing more. He simply offered her his arm and helped her to rise. Beatrice led the way, taking them from the drawing room, up the stairs and into the family wing of the castle. She paused, finally, outside a heavy, oaken door.
“This is the blue room which is typically reserved for guests… but it was used only recently and will be the easiest to see made ready for you. No doubt, the maids have already taken care of it,” she explained, ducking her head so that the candlelight from the wall sconces set her dark hair aglow.
“I’m sure it will be fine. Thank you.”
Graham opened the door and stepped inside. A panel on the far wall closed and he heard the giggling of maids as they made their escape. His bag, made of heavy waxed cloth and looking remarkably out of place, had been set upon the trunk at the end of his bed.
Warm water had been placed in a basin near the hearth. Eager to be done with the hardships of the journey and the strange ache that had blossomed in his chest under Lady Agatha’s obvious distress, he stripped off his clothes and moved to the washstand. After scrubbing his face and removing as much filth from the road as possible, he turned toward the big bed that occupied the center of the room.
Ornately carved, the bed alone bigger than any room he’d ever stayed in, it was draped in heavy, blue velvet. A portrait of a lovely woman in a blue gown with roses tucked in her hair hung to the right of it. She reminded him of Beatrice. Stepping closer to it, he noted that the painting was somewhat scandalous. The woman’s gown was remarkably low cut, revealing the upper swells of her breasts. There, peeking through the lace trim of her gown, were the faint rose-colored shadows of her nipples.
Graham smiled, his lips twisting upward into an unfamiliar expression. Rich or poor, all men were motivated by the drive to possess a woman. Was that the source of Edmund’s and Beatrice’s animosity to one another? Who, he wondered, was the spurned lover?
*
With Lady Agatha settled for the night, under the efficient care of her maid, Beatrice returned to her own chamber. Her knees trembled. Indeed, there was no part of her body that did not shake violently from the shock.
She had thought him dead. In truth, they had all thought him dead save for Lady Agatha. All of her protestations had been believed to be nothing more than a mother’s need to believe her child still lived. There were things she had seen in the man that reminded her of the boy she’d known. The dark sweep of his hair, the icy blue eyes that seemed to pierce through her—all of that was familiar. Lady Agatha’s assertion that he looked the very image of the late Lord Nicholas could not be denied, either.
Letting herself into her chamber, Beatrice moved to her dressing table and sank down heavily upon the chair there. Her legs would simply no longer support her. He looked like Graham. And yet she did not believe, not truly. Because he’d been kind. The concern he’d felt for Lady Agatha had been genuine and real. She’d sensed how carefully he’d edited the story of his long absence to withhold anything that might be upsetting to her. Then there’d been the subtle shift of his position when Edmund had been at his most belligerent and threatening. He’d clearly meant to put himself between the two of them, to protect her if need be.
He looked like Graham, but he did not possess the same character. As a boy, Graham had been cruel. He’d reveled in tormenting her about her orphaned status, pulling her hair, pinching and shoving her, hiding disgusting creatures in her bed just to hear her scream. And she’d not been his only victim. He’d done the same to many of the servants and to Edmund when he’d come visiting. There was no cruelty in the man she’d just met, and it was hard for her to fathom that a more difficult life had produced a kinder version of the boy she’d once known.
Betsy let herself in, her eyes agog and her mouth forming an “o” of surprise. “Is it really him, Miss? Is it his lordship returned?”
Beatrice looked up at her maid, in truth, her friend. Only Betsy knew of the way she had to hide from Edmund, of the strangeness of Christopher and the frailty of Lady Agatha. Betsy was her confidante. But if it was true, and he was Graham, Lord Blakemore, returned to them, he was also Betsy’s employer. So Beatrice opted for caution.
“He looks like him. He could be him… Lady Agatha believes it with her whole heart,” she said.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Miss, but Lady Agatha wants it to be him. I suppose we all do for her sake… but you have doubts.”
“Of course, I have doubts. He was a boy when he disappeared. Who can say what that boy would look like now? Or what manner of man he might have become?” Beatrice mused.
“I’m going to get you a sleeping draught,” Betsy declared decisively.
“No. Lady Agatha might need me,” Beatrice protested.
“Lady Agatha has that dragon of hers, Crenshaw, to see to her during the night,” Betsy replied, referring to Lady Agatha’s maid. “You’re worried, Miss. I can see it in your eyes and I know you. You’ll not sleep a wink without it. And tomorrow, when decisions are made and hard questions asked, you’ll need to have your wits about you.”
There was no refuting that logic. Beatrice nodded her assent and Betsy left to fetch the tonic. While she was gone, Beatrice began tugging the pins from her hair and dropping them into the small box on her dressing table. Her life had altered irrevocably upon Graham’s entrance to Castle Black. For better or worse remained to be seen.