Chapter Thirteen
With one last glance at Whitney, Everett took his leave of her. The business with Taverham couldn’t wait. He passed through the kitchen garden, dodging the occasional flick of water aimed at him with a laugh, and looked ahead to the formal gardens. The rose garden stood more or less directly between Twilight Hill and Warstone Manor. If Taverham had been there at the time he’d passed this way, Everett would never have spoken to Whitney today.
He was glad he had.
His heart felt lighter, and it was nice that she accepted his determination to be a good brother. She was a good listener.
He tugged down his damp waistcoat, beginning to feel chilled in the breeze that curled around the ornamental trees on the manor’s southern side. At his home, where no tree stood less than twenty feet tall, it took a gale blowing for him to notice a change in the weather.
Twilit Hill had been designed, cultivated, with no allowance made for natural growth. A series of garden rooms, full of clipped hedges, garden beds and checkered paths, led visitors away from the manor and eventually to wide-open fields.
He was halfway through the rose garden when he spotted the marquess and viscount sitting in the shade together in a cloud of cigar smoke.
“Your mother will throw a fit,” Everett warned as he joined them.
Taverham blew a perfect ring of smoke and watched it float away. “I’m a grown man. I can do whatever I want.”
Viscount Carrington agreed, drawing on his cigar without a word.
Everett hadn’t had much to do with Viscount Carrington. He was related to Taverham through his marriage, but with Miranda gone for so long, encounters with him had been few and far between.
And this year, there’d been a scandal around the time Carrington had married, a broken engagement and breach-of-promise suit, that had become quite a messy and expensive affair. Since his marriage, viewed as unpopular by many, Carrington had rarely been seen, eschewing society for the company of friends and family and the children he’d taken in.
Hostesses had dropped him from their guest lists immediately and the loss of popularity had to hurt. But for all of that weighing on him, he seemed in good spirits now.
“You must do as you like, but within reason, surely. I’m positive your wife has opinions on many things,” Everett suggested, hopeful that his remark would not sound the least bit disparaging of the marchioness. It was a delicate line he walked, always taking pains to never unwittingly give offense. Not that Everett had found fault with the marchioness since her return to her marriage. He could not say he and the lady were friends yet, but she had chosen not to make him an enemy. He appreciated that she’d not believed he should be punished for Emily’s behavior. “I take it Miranda has no objections to cigars?”
“None as long as I air my clothes well and don’t kiss her straight after I return to the house,” Taverham confessed with an easy smile. He dug in his coat pocket.
“Agatha is much the same about cigars. I keep my smoking to the out of doors, too.” Carrington squinted at him. “I say, did you run afoul of my children on the way here?”
“How can you tell?” He was still uncomfortably damp. “But in their defense, it was my own fault I am in this state. I misunderstood the reason they were screaming and ran right into the fray.”
“And suffered for it.” Taverham came close, staring at his coat. “You could be wet enough to the skin to create your own puddle, I think.”
“Very likely.” Everett relaxed and declined the offer of a cigar from Taverham. He glanced around with a fond smile. “Emily always loved this garden.”
Taverham inhaled sharply. “I’d prefer you not mention that name to me again.”
“I must.” He glanced at Viscount Carrington. “Would you mind leaving us? I need to speak privately with the marquess.”
Carrington glanced between them and then nodded. “I’ll take a walk about the grounds while I finish this, and then head inside to help settle the children down for their dinner.”
The lanky viscount wandered off with an easy smile and jaunty wave.
“That was unnecessary,” Taverham warned when he was gone. “He’s family.”
“I know he is part of your family, but I’d rather what we talk about remain between us. It is about Emily that I wish to speak, and the garden she loved so much seems an appropriate place.”
“I cannot forgive her,” Taverham warned sternly. “She kept Christopher’s existence from me.”
“Yet, you still acknowledge your mother, and she knew about the boy, too, didn’t she?”
“That is entirely different,” the marquess claimed as he jumped to his feet. “Why do you think my mother moved to the dower house?”
But Taverham still spoke of the dowager marchioness, whereas Emily had been erased from any and every discussion. Everett understood why, but still, she was his sister. He was as appalled as anyone at her behavior, but that was the past. He only had the energy for the present. “Emily is here.”
“What?” Taverham roared.
Everett cringed at the fury in Taverham’s eyes. “Not here on your estate,” he hastened to add. “But she is at mine.”
“Since when? The ladies haven’t spoken of her.”
“They haven’t seen her,” Everett promised. “I moved Emily into Rose Cottage.”
Taverham advanced angrily, and Everett took a pace back, maintaining a distance between them for Taverham’s sake. They had never fought, not physically, and now was not the time to start over a situation he couldn’t change, even if he desperately wished to.
Taverham followed him. “How dare you put my son in danger?”
“Just listen to me,” Everett warned, his face heating. Bringing Emily home put everyone in danger, but not for the reasons Taverham assumed. Consumption was contagious, especially so for the young, old or infirm. Taverham had a son, an aging mother and a wife with a weak heart. “The boy is in no danger if he keeps to your lands, I promise you.”
Taverham turned away, ripped a rose bud from a vine and crushed it in his fist. “If she even looks twice at my boy, I will turn her over to the magistrate immediately and offer up all the sordid details of her behavior. I trusted you!”
Everett gritted his teeth. “I said he was safe, and I mean it. There is no excuse for her behavior. None,” he agreed.
“And yet you brought her within three miles of where we live?”
Taverham dug his fingertip into Everett’s breastbone so hard he winced.
“For God’s sake, listen,” he protested, and Taverham drew back, frowning. Everett turned away to gather his excuses into a coherent explanation. There were a group of gardeners gathering not too far away, so he lowered his voice to a conversational pitch. “I thought you said you would remain in London longer than you did. She was here when you first arrived, and I cannot move her now. She does not even know you have returned to the estate, and I don’t intend to tell her.”
“Someone is bound to tell her. Your fiancée will certainly mention us being here when they speak.” Taverham’s eyes widened. “I promised Miranda she could trust you. You promised to keep that bitch away from my family, and I thought she would travel as she always wished to.”
“She will remain at Rose Cottage for the foreseeable future.”
Taverham stared. “Have you lost your mind?”
“The garden gate is always locked.”
Taverham rocked back on his heels and raked a hand through his hair until it stood on end. He knew Rose Cottage well, having consulted on improvements in past years. The fact he’d locked the garden gate was an important point in his favor, as it ensured the boy’s continued safety. “You really confined her?”
“It is as much for her own safety as anyone else’s,” Everett confessed, his voice thickened. “She is dying.”
Taverham shook his head swiftly. “Nonsense. A ruse. She’s after sympathy, as she always did as a girl. You could never see it. I will not fall prey to her pretty little lies again.”
Everett lifted his chin. He’d been fooled without a shadow of a doubt in the past, but Emily’s days of twisting him around her finger were well and truly done. “She has consumption. The doctors in London, and here, confirmed it. She is in a very bad way.”
Taverham took several paces back, his skin leeching of color. “Consumption?”
Everett took a steadying breath before he bared his soul further, hoping some good could come from total honesty about Emily. “She came to my house in London, sick with it, and, after speaking to the doctors I consulted, I drove her directly to Rose Cottage in my own carriage myself.”
“Is that why you left London without warning me?” Taverham appeared stunned. “That was weeks ago.”
“It was. I took her away before she could make any attempt to call upon you and your wife and son. That could have been disastrous, given Miranda’s fragile health and the boy’s fear.”
Taverham’s face colored red. “What do you expect me to do, now that you’ve told me about her? Wring my hands and wish her to get better soon? Weep at her bedside?” Taverham gestured to the gardeners who hovered at the edge of the garden and started pointing to the roses around them. “Take them all and burn them.”
The gardeners came with axes and shovels in hand and began to remove the rose bushes one by one, tossing them carelessly into barrows.
Everett’s chest tightened with sorrow at the destruction they wrought in such a short time. Emily had tended this part of Twilit Hill’s gardens as if it were her own. She’d spent hours here, coaxing the buds to bloom so that the man she loved in vain always had beauty around him. Seeing her act of hopeless love wiped from existence hurt more than he’d imagined it could.
Taverham’s men were quick and efficient, until only bare garden beds surrounded them. “Perhaps after this is gone, Miranda will feel inclined to venture here at last.”
Everett frowned. “Why wouldn’t she come to this part of the garden?”
Taverham turned on him. “This is the place my new wife saw Emily in my arms the night we married. This is where Emily kissed me.”
“What?!”
“Your sister was intoxicated, and I carried her home to Warstone rather than let her embarrass herself before the wedding guests. Because of that kindness on my part, Miranda was led to believe I was unfaithful to her, and always would be. I cannot care about Emily if I wish to keep my wife happy.”
He gasped, shocked completely. Taverham hadn’t ever given him a full explanation of why Miranda had gone away, only that Emily had played a part. He had thought her actions toward the boy were bad enough, but this too…
He raked a hand through his hair. “I had no notion of any of that.”
“Now you know everything,” Taverham insisted. “Emily deliberately set out to wreck my marriage, sowing the seeds of doubt and mistrust in Miranda’s mind early on, and later attempting to poison my memory and faith in her return, so I would declare her dead and marry Emily once I was free. All so she could take Miranda’s rightful place as my wife. Emily is dead to me already.”
Everett gulped. He couldn’t expect sympathy for Emily. Not after this too. Taverham was well within his rights to be furious, but Emily was Everett’s only family. He couldn’t throw her out to fend for herself. She might return to Twilit Hill and cause even more trouble. “She is not long for this world.”
Taverham scowled. “I don’t give a damn.”
Everett nodded. In truth, he understood this reaction from Taverham better now. “If the idea of her death gives you pleasure, so be it. If you had anything left you want to say to her, you know where to find her. The gardener there will only open the gate to you, and no other.”
“I wouldn’t waste my breath,” Taverham said. “Leave as soon as it’s polite to do so, and do not breathe word of this near my wife, son, or anyone at Twilit Hill. I will not have Christopher afraid of her shadow ever again.”
He winced at the dismissal, and bowed formally. Whitney knew about Emily, of course, but he suspected she would say nothing, now he’d spoken to Taverham. “Of course, my lord. I do beg your pardon for the intrusion.”