To Loveand To Cherish

  But his charming, wolfish grin hadn’t changed, and Christy found himself smiling back, wanting to laugh with him in spite of the somber circumstances of this meeting. “Geoffrey, thank God you’ve come. Your father—”

  “Is he dead?” He moved around him to the bedside without waiting for an answer. “Oh, my, yes,” he said softly, staring down at the still corpse. “He’s dead, all right, no question about that.”

  Christy stayed where he was, to give Geoffrey a little time to himself. The woman in the doorway hadn’t moved. She was slim, tall, dressed sedately in a dark brown traveling costume; the veiled brim of her hat cast a shadow over her face. He glanced at her curiously, but she didn’t speak.

  Geoffrey had his back to the room; Christy tried to read his emotion from the set of his shoulders, but the rigid posture was unrevealing. After another minute, he crossed to the bed to stand beside him, and together they gazed down at Edward’s lifeless face. “He didn’t suffer at the end,” Christy said quietly. “It was a peaceful death.”

  “Was it? He looks ghastly, doesn’t he? What was wrong with him, anyway?”

  “A disease of the liver.”

  “Liver, eh?” There was no hint of sorrow in his frowning, narrow-eyed countenance; rather, Christy had the unnerving impression that he was scrutinizing the body to assure himself it was really dead.

  “He asked for you before he died.”

  Geoffrey looked up at that, incredulous, then burst into high, hearty laughter. “Oh, that’s good. That’s very good!”

  Dismayed, Christy looked away. The woman had come farther into the room; in the shadowy lamplight, her eyes glowed an odd silver-gray color. He couldn’t read the expression in them, but the set of her wide, straight mouth was ironic.

  “I think he was sorry at the end,” he tried again. “For everything. I believe he felt remorse in his heart for—” This time Geoffrey cut him off with a crude, appallingly vulgar oath that made Christy blush. The woman arched one dark brow at him; he’d have said she was mocking him, but there was no playfulness in her face.

  Then Geoffrey flashed his charming smile, and the anger in his eyes disappeared as if it had never been. He spun away from the bed and draped his arm across Christy’s shoulders, giving him a rough, affectionate squeeze. “How’ve you been, you ruddy old sod? You look . . .” He stood back and made a show of examining him, head to toe. “Christ, you still look like an archangel!” He ruffled Christy’s blond hair, laughing, and under his breath Christy caught the unmistakable odor of alcohol. He stiffened involuntarily. All the things he could have said about Geoffrey’s appearance seemed either tactless or hurtful, so he didn’t answer.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Geoffrey urged, guiding him toward the door. Christy resisted, and Geoffrey stopped short, adjacent to the silent, motionless woman. “Oh—sorry, darling, forgot about you there. This is Christian Morrell, an old chum from my halcyon youth. Christy, meet my wife, Anne. Anne, Christy. Christy, Anne. Shake hands, why don’t you? That’s it! Now let’s all go have a drink.”

  “How do you do, Reverend Morrell,” murmured Anne Verlaine, unsmiling, ignoring her husband’s facetiousness.

  Christy struggled to hide his surprise. Rumors about Geoffrey were always rife in Wyckerley, had been since he’d run away at sixteen and never returned. About four years ago Christy had heard that he’d married the daughter of an artist, a painter—but the next rumor had him off fighting the Burmese in Pegu, and there was no more talk of a wife. As a consequence, Christy had assumed that the marriage was just another in the colorful catalog of stories about the village’s prodigal son that might not be true but never failed to entertain the natives.

  “Mrs. Verlaine,” he greeted her, taking the cool, firm hand she held out to him. She was younger than he’d thought at first, probably not even twenty-five. Her accent was English, but there was something distinctly foreign about her; something in her dress, he thought, or the penetrating directness of her gaze.

  “No, no, it’s not Mrs. Verlaine anymore, is it? It’s Lady D’Aubrey! How does it feel to be a viscountess, darling? Frankly I can’t wait for someone to call me ‘my lord.’ Come on, we must go and drink to Father’s demise. It took him long enough, but better late than never, what?” Geoffrey’s arm around his wife’s waist looked steely; she resisted for only a moment, then let him lead her out of the room. Christy had no choice but to follow.

  ***

  Lynton Hall’s best drawing room looked even drearier than usual to him, but that might be because he was seeing it through Geoffrey’s eyes. “Bleeding hell,” the new viscount pronounced on entering the cold, depressing chamber. “Place looks like a ruddy crypt. Light some candles, will you, Anne?” He glanced around for the bell rope, which dangled beside the marble fireplace mantel. “Does this work?” He pulled on it. Plaster dust sifted down from the ceiling in time with a faint tinkling in the distance.

  Anne Verlaine went to the windows and pulled back the heavy draperies. Bright sunlight flooded the drawing room, picking out each stain in the wallpaper and every threadbare patch in the dusty carpet. Geoffrey threw his forearm across his eyes and gave a mock-pained cry. “Eh! Easy, darling, not that much light.” His wife sent him an impenetrable look, pulled the curtains half closed, and went to the sideboard to light the oil lamp.

  While Christy stood by the door, Geoffrey prowled the room, scowling at the furniture. “See anything that looks like it might hold liquor?”

  “Not likely,” Christy said, smiling. “Your father stopped drinking spirits when he became ill.” Geoffrey cursed cheerfully. “I suppose there might be brandy or something in the kitchen.”

  Halting footsteps coming from the hallway made them all turn toward the door. The housekeeper started into the room, saw them, and stopped in confusion.

  “Mrs. Fruit!” Geoffrey cried genially. “God’s flesh and blood, you haven’t changed much, have you?” She drew back, fearful. “What, don’t you know me? It’s Geoffrey!”

  She cupped her left ear. “Geoffrey?” she quavered, smiling uncertainly. “My saints, it is you. Glory be—I thought it was your father!”

  Geoffrey clutched at his chest, pretending he was stabbed. “Don’t tell me I look like that blighted corpse up there, old dear!” he said playfully. “Take it back, do you hear?”

  “What? Corpse?” She covered her mouth with her hands, staring at him in dread.

  Geoffrey finally realized she was deaf. “He’s dead!” he said loudly. “The sod’s croaked!” He watched in amazement as Mrs. Fruit’s wrinkled old face crumbled. “By God, she minds,” he marveled, turning to Christy and Anne. “She actually cares.” He put his arm around the housekeeper’s frail shoulders. “There, there, old thing. Go and get us some brandy, will you? Brandy! And have a snort for yourself, it’ll do you good.” He turned her around and gave her a little shove out the door.

  Coming out of his shock, Christy started to go after her—but Anne was faster. “Geoffrey, for God’s sake,” she said in a low, strained voice, and walked quickly out into the hall. The desolate sound of Mrs. Fruit’s weeping faded with the two women’s footsteps.

  “Why did you do that?” Christy asked, more astonished then angry.

  “Do what?” Geoffrey strolled to the high casement windows, looking innocently pleased with himself. He gave another of his high, forced laughs, trying to make Christy join in. “Look at this place, will you? It’s grotesque! I haven’t thought about it once since I walked out twelve years ago, not once, I swear to you. And yet, now that I’m here, it’s as if I’d never left. I remember every corner, every stick of furniture. Even trick of the light . . .” He trailed off, gazing into space, seeming to have forgotten what he was saying.

  “Your father had let things go,” Christy offered, conscious of the understatement.

  “Why? Because he was sick?”

 
“No, his illness only lasted a few months. He just wasn’t interested.”

  “Ha! And I thought we had nothing in common.”

  Christy stared at him in growing dismay. “The estate makes a fair profit, I’m told, but he never cared about reinvesting the capital in his holdings. The tenants’ farms are in very bad shape, the cottages—”

  “What did he do with his money?”

  “Banked it, I assume.” He came closer. “You could do a lot of good here, Geoffrey. Holyoake does the best he can, but he’s only—”

  “How much is there? How much money?”

  “In the estate? I couldn’t say.”

  Geoffrey looked as if he didn’t believe him.

  “He never took me into his confidence, I assure you. His lawyers will be in touch with you soon, I’m sure, and then you’ll know everything.”

  “That’s assuming he’s left me anything at all,” Geoffrey retorted with an unamused smile. He went to the hall doorway and leaned out, calling loudly, “Anne! Hurry and find a bottle of something, anything, and bring it back when you come!” To Christy he said, “What a trip! I’m dry as a virgin. We were on the train from London all night, then the most awful coach up from Plymouth this morning.” He threw himself full-length on the worn brocade sofa. “Sit down! God, I can’t get used to the sight of you, Christy. You look like a great black crane in those clothes.”

  Christy smiled, taking the wing chair beside him; the odor of mildew rose from it when he sat. “That’s not the image I was trying to foster.” He didn’t say it, but he couldn’t get over the sight of Geoffrey, either. The Verlaine good looks had all but vanished under a pallor of illness. His dark brown hair was already receding from a white, bony forehead, making his eyes look blacker than ever. His fine nostrils were pinched, papery; he licked his dry lips with a whitish tongue, and his eyelids were crusty, as if he’d just woken up, or as if he’d fallen asleep weeping.

  “No, not a crane,” he corrected himself, “a golden eagle—because of the hair. Ha! So tell me, how long have you been in your saintly calling?”

  “I was ordained two years ago. I had a small living in Exminster for about a year before the bishop assigned me to St. Giles’ parish.”

  “Assigned you? Didn’t you want to come home?”

  “I . . . had mixed feelings.” Geoffrey laughed knowingly, but Christy doubted that he and his friend had the same reservations about returning to Wyckerley.

  “And what does the real Reverend Morrell think about you following in his hallowed footsteps?”

  “My father died about four years ago. Two years after my mother.”

  “Oh, Christy, I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Thank you.” He wanted to ask, Why didn’t you ever write? Why did you let twelve years go by without even telling me where you were? “And you’ve become a soldier of fortune,” he said instead, adopting the light tone Geoffrey had set. “If half the rumors I’ve heard are true, you’ve had an interesting time of it, to say the least.”

  Geoffrey got to his feet jerkily and started pacing the room again. “Oh, hell, yes, interesting to say the least. Say, Christy, do you still ride?”

  “Yes, I’ve got a chestnut gelding. His name’s Doncaster, and he’s a great beauty.”

  “Do you race him?”

  “No, not anymore.”

  “What!” Geoffrey made a shocked face.

  Christy thought of the wild, reckless chases they’d run as boys; it had been their favorite sport, the rabid, abiding interest that, at the end, was almost all that had held their friendship together. “The bishop frowns on horse racing among the clergy,” he said with a dry smile, “so I’ve given it up.”

  “Bloody goddamn pity.” He strode to the door again. “Anne! Ah—here you are, and not a second too soon.” The new Lady D’Aubrey came into the room, and Geoffrey grabbed at the bottle she was carrying on a tray; the sudden shift of balance almost toppled the two glasses beside it. She set the tray on the table by the sofa and walked away, stopping before the cold fireplace.

  “Sherry. Good God,” Geoffrey said, making a face. “None for you, darling?” She turned around to murmur a refusal. She’d taken off her hat; she had reddish-blond hair, worn loose and cut shorter than Christy thought was currently the fashion. Geoffrey filled the glasses and handed one to him. “What shall we drink to? I know: to being orphans. My wife’s an orphan too—aren’t you, darling? Oh, yes, a poor, penniless orphan. I thought she was a rich one, you know, but that turned out to be an error of gross and tragic proportions.” He tossed back half the sherry in his glass and immediately filled it again. “What? You won’t drink to being an orphan? Very well, let’s be more direct.” He held his glass high. “To the death of my father: may his wicked soul rot in hell forever.”

  Christy watched him finish his drink in a few swallows and slap the empty glass on the table with nearly enough force to break it. He felt Anne Verlaine’s quiet regard, and turned to look at her. Her eyes weren’t silver now; they were green, and they were watching him with a strange, somber, resigned expectancy. He set his glass down untouched.

  “So! Tell me the news of my beloved old home. Holyoake’s still the bailey, is he?” Geoffrey reached again for the bottle.

  “No, he died several years ago. Do you remember William, his son? He’s the bailiff now. He’s a good man, a hard worker; I think you’ll—”

  “Excellent, then I can turn everything over to him.”

  Christy frowned. “Then you don’t intend to stay?”

  “Good God, no. Not for long, anyway. I’ve applied for a new army commission—didn’t I tell you? The worst mistake of my life was selling my captaincy last year. Well—” he grinned at his wife “—almost the worst. Should’ve borrowed the money I needed instead. Ah, but that’s all water under the bridge. Do you know what the Royal Commission wants for a lieutenant colonelcy in the Foot Guards these days? Nine thousand pounds—and that’s only the regulation fee; the real cost is closer to thirteen thousand. If dear Father has left me anything at all, I’ll be able to pay the thieves in Mayfair off, and with luck I should be on a ship sailing to the Black Sea within the month.”

  This time Christy couldn’t hide his amazement. “You mean—to fight? You’d go as a soldier?”

  “What the hell do you think I’d go as, a nurse?”

  “But you—” He broke off awkwardly. “I beg your pardon. It’s just that I thought perhaps you’d been ill.”

  “Oh, really? Do I look ill?” Belligerence flashed in his fierce black eyes. But he smoothed his hair back with one hand, and afterward it was as if he’d smoothed away his anger, too. “Actually, I’ve had a flare-up of an old plague of mine—malaria; got it in Basutoland in ’fifty-one, fighting the bloody natives. But I’m fine now, tip-top. Dear Anne takes such wonderful care of me, my bad spells never last long. Do they, sweeting?”

  Everything Geoffrey said to his wife sounded like a subtle insult. Christy could feel the tension between them, volatile as a sparking fuse. He kept searching for a sign, a glimmer of the old Geoffrey in this gaunt, sardonic stranger, but twelve years had erased every one. His brittle geniality was a mask, and under it lay something dark and unwholesome.

  As for Geoffrey’s wife, Christy wanted to stare at her until she made sense to him, fit into some category of womanhood he could check off and set aside, a mystery solved. She was lovely—but that was obvious; a quality much more arresting than beauty simmered under her apparently unlimited composure. It drew him in spite of the faint mockery in her eyes—he was sure now that it was mockery—whenever she intercepted his curious glance.

  Geoffrey had collapsed on the sofa again, shoulders hunched, staring down into his drink; it was as if a light inside had gone out, so total was his withdrawal. Christy had to speak twice to get his attention. “I said I’ll make the arrangements for your fath
er’s burial if you like, Geoffrey.”

  “Yes, do,” he said carelessly. “Oh, are you leaving?” Christy had picked up his hat. “Don’t go.” He stood up, animated again, almost urgent. “Stay, can’t you?”

  He hesitated. “Yes, all right. For a little while, if you want me to.”

  “Good! Have a drink, then, for God’s sake. Let’s tie one on, Christy, just like old times. Remember the night my father was away in Tavistock, and you and I drank up all the gin the stable-boy had hidden in his tack? I’ve never seen anybody so drunk as you were that night. You wanted to ride that bay horse you had—what was his name?”

  Christy grinned, abashed. “Piper.”

  “Piper! You wanted to bring him in the house and see if he’d eat supper with us at the dining room table. Ha! Remember? Here, drink your drink.”

  Geoffrey tried to press the glass into his hand, but Christy set it down and reached again for his hat. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “What? But why?”

  “I’ve got a meeting with the vestry and the churchwarden that I’ve put off twice already. They’ll be waiting for me at the rectory. After that, I have Evening Prayers.”

  “But you just said you’d stay!”

  “I thought you might need me,” he explained, feeling awkward again. “That is . . . in my professional capacity.”

  “Oh, you thought—” Geoffrey threw back his head and roared with laughter. “You thought I needed spiritual comfort!”

  Christy felt his face getting warm. He couldn’t look at Mrs. Verlaine this time, but he imagined her steady, measuring gaze on him; she was probably marveling over her discovery of a quaint, amusing specimen of English country life she’d only read about in books until now.