Page 64 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Her question restored some of his bluster. “Why? You silly chit! Because I chose to-that’s why. Here, take it.”
He held out a velvet-covered jewel case. When she continued to stare, he thrust it at her. “Take it! Take it, I said!”
Her fingers closed over the rectangular box. Knowing her grandfather’s tastes, she imagined some gaudy jewel, flashy and too expensive. But when she opened the box, it revealed a strand of pearls, each bead a perfect circle of milky-white translucence.
“They’re beautiful,” she stammered.
“Your grandmother’s,” he said.
She gaped at him again, overcome with astonishment.
“You did have a grandmother, you know.” His bushy brows drew together in a fierce glower. “I didn’t produce your father all on my own.”
“It is only that you’ve never mentioned her,” Phaedra said. “I don’t believe I even know her name.”
“Corinda. She died young-too young.”
“Father never told me anything about her, either.”
“Didn’t know anything to tell. He was but a lad of three at the time.” Weylin lapsed into a frowning silence, and Phaedrathought that was all he meant to offer on the subject. The candlelight played harsh tricks with his face, making the fleshy pockets about his eyes and jowls appear to droop, adding years to his already age-lined face, his shrewd eyes dulled by an expression of remembered pain.
Phaedra longed to know more about the young wife he had lost, but doubted that he would tell her. He rarely spoke about his past, except to boast of his financial achievements. She was surprised when he continued.
“Your grandmother and I-we didn’t live in a house like this one-nothing even approaching it.” He glanced about him as though half-expecting the Heath’s magnificence to disappear at any moment. “Two rooms are what Corie and I shared, but we made do. I was but a journeyman brewer then. My wages didn’t stretch to even an adequate supply of coal to heat the place.”
Weylin crossed his arms, rubbing them as he stared into the candle flame. “Those dratted rooms were never warm enough for Corie. I always had to keep telling the foolish wench not to huddle so close to the fire. ‘Mind your petticoats, Corie, afore you scorch them. A chit of her age should have had more sense.”
He emitted a heavy sigh. “It was powerful cold that winter. Corie had been suffering from a chill, and she was always bundling up the boy in her own cloak. She was alone that day, no one else with her but the lad. I supposed she just couldn’t get warm enough, and I wasn’t there to warn her.” He swallowed thickly.
“They reckoned afterwards that the hem of her dress must’ve caught fire, and she pure panicked-just ran and ran. They found her facedown in the snow—” Weylin broke off, blinking hard. “Damned foolish girl.” Abruptly he turned his back on Phaedra.
Her hands clenched about the jewel box, and as she stared down at the pearls, it was almost as though she could see a reflection caught in each tiny lustrous bead, that of a sweet-facedyoung girl, with her father’s gentle eyes and delicate features and her hair. Phaedra hardly knew why, but without ever having set eyes upon Corinda Weylin, she felt certain her grandmother had had flowing masses of red hair.
Phaedra longed to go to her grandfather and wrap her arms about him in a comforting gesture. But she had been thrust aside too many times to risk it. Weylin stood, with his hands clasped behind his back.
He said gruffly, “I always told Corie one day I’d be able to give her whatever she wanted, furs, fine carriages, jewels. But there was only one bit of finery she ever hankered after, and that was a rope of pearls. I was never able to buy them for her-so now I’m giving them to you.”
“Thank you, Grandpapa,” Phaedra said. She at last dared to plant a quick kiss upon his rough cheek. He did not push her away, but he squirmed with obvious discomfort.
“No need to make a fuss. You’ve turned out a good, obedient wench, so you have-far more sensible than your father. I could have made a grand gentleman of him if he had had the wit to let me. But you’re going to surpass any hope I ever had of him.”
A smile played about Weylin’s lips. “The Marchioness de Varnais. Not bad for a brewer’s granddaughter.”
Phaedra set the pearls back on the desk, the pleasure she had taken in the gift fading. “The marquis has not favored me with a proposal, Grandfather.”
“He will.” Weylin nodded confidently. “I’ve seen the look in his eyes when he gazes upon you.”
Not lately you haven’t, she thought. Her heart ached with the wish that it all could be exactly as her grandfather fancied-that Armande could be who he claimed to be, and so much in love with her that he would sweep her off to his chateau, there to live happily ever after. Impossible. They were bound up in such a fogof lies and deceit that there appeared no hope of lasting love or happiness.
She was startled from her melancholy reflection when Sawyer clapped his hands together. He rubbed them almost as though the brisk gesture could cleanse him of the tender emotion he had not liked to reveal.
“You’d best hie yourself off to an early bed. We shall have a busy day on the morrow, with all the young lads frisking about.” “Aye, the apprentices’ fete,” she said without much enthusiasm.
But Weylin’s eyes sparkled with boyish eagerness. “I vow the boys will be in high spirits, glad of a holiday. I would have myself all those years I slaved beneath old Master Hutchin’s lash.”
Her grandfather was a man of so many odd contrasts. Phaedra wondered if she would ever understand him. “It was a most hard road, was it not, Grandfather?” she asked. “The road that led you to all of this.”
“Indeed it was, girl.”
