Page 2 of The Marquess of Temptation
"You look so like your mother," he whispered, as he caught sight of Hestia for the first time in three years.
"Thank you," Hestia replied softly, shy of this strange man before her. Her father, once they were home in Rose Cottage, walked from room to room wearing a vacant expression.
"She's gone," he whispered, to which Hestia nodded. "I loved her, did you know?"
"I knew," Hestia refrained from sighing; oh how she knew about her parent's love for each other. Instead of finding strength from her father's presence, Hestia found herself playing the care-giver, as David Stockbow, the legendary adventurer, fell into a deep depression.
"I loved her so much," he would whisper, as he paced the house wearing his now customary vacant expression, his frame half starved with grief.
Love. Hestia deplored that word. Love had done nothing for anyone, bar cause misery and upset. Her father was unable to work, save for pottering around the garden, and once the treasures he had brought home with him were pawned, Hestia found herself once again paying daily visits to Lady Bedford.
"Can he not go out to work?" Lady Bedford would sigh, as she handed Hestia a fistful of coins.
"He can't seem to do anything," Hestia confessed from the corner of the room, where she was in danger of being smothered by what was now a dozen, boisterous Cavaliers. "He spends all day in the garden, building his..."
She trailed off; for she had no idea what it was her father was building. He had piled dozens of stones atop each other in the garden, before planting a bevy of wild roses around them. If she didn't know any better she would say he was building a shrine to her mother, but she did know better than to voice such concerns to Lady Bedford. Lady Bedford did hate a scandal - and nothing was more scandalous than a man losing his mind.
It was around the time of Hestia's nineteenth birthday, that her father's past came back to haunt him. Hestia returned home from Bedford Hall one evening, to find him hidden inside the cottage with all the shutters closed on the windows and the poker for the fire clutched in his hand.
"Has anyone in the village been asking after me?" he asked from a dark corner, his voice a low rasp.
"Not more than usual," Hestia replied diplomatically, for nobody in the villageeverenquired after her father, though she hadn't the heart to tell him.
"I saw a man yesterday, a blond man, poking around the garden," her father licked his lips nervously. "And then I got a letter."
He gestured toward the kitchen table, upon which there was a page, much creased as though it had been read and folded a dozen times. Hestia glanced at her father, who was eyeing the page nervously and supposed that it had been manhandled more than once.
"I know what you stole, Stockbow," Hestia picked up the page and read aloud, trying to keep the note of alarm from her voice, "And I will kill you for it. Goodness, father, who sent this?"
"I don't know," her father's eyes were wild, "It could be anyone, Hestia. You're not safe here. You'll have to go back to Bedford Hall."
"I can't leave you," Hestia protested, though her father ignored her, waving his hand to silence her.
"You're not leaving me," he said, his voice firm and controlled, the voice he had spoken with when she was a child. The threat to his life seemed to give him strength and he visibly grew before her eyes. "I shall set off for Bristol at once. I'll send you on money, once I have it, until then stay with Lady Bedford."
He would broker no argument and Hestia soon found herself, for the second time that day, traipsing the country lane to Bedford Hall, where an unquestioning Lady Bedford had the maid show her to one of the less impressive guest rooms for the night. It was past midnight when the sound of voices from the entrance hall woke Hestia from her slumber.
"Dead as a doornail," she heard a deep voice boom, "Put a bullet through his head. Well, even you said that he had gone slightly mad since his wife passed, my Lady."
"How awful," Hestia heard Lady Bedford exclaim in response, "What an awful scandal for poor Hestia to bear."
What was an awful scandal? she wondered, creeping quietly down the grand staircase to where Lord and Lady Bedford and the local magistrate stood huddled together.
"What's an awful scandal?" she voiced, bile rising in her throat as the pale faces of the Bedfords turned to her.
"Your father has only gone and blown out his brains with a blunderbuss," Lord Bedford, who was hard of hearing and low on tact, bellowed so loudly that his words echoed off the cavernous ceiling of the entrance hall. Hestia felt as though the very ground beneath her had become unstable and she gripped the nearby banister to keep herself from falling.
"He can't have," she protested, "He was going to Bristol - he told me he was leaving for Bristol."
No matter how many times Hestia repeated this fact, she was ignored. Over the next few days her life was a blur of people traipsing in and out of Bedford Hall, speaking in whispers to the Lord and Lady of the house. She overheard the words "coroners court" and "suicide", spoken once or twice, and finally Reverend Plucker arrived to have a quiet word with her.
"We cannot bury your father on Church grounds, Hestia, I am sorry," he said, wiping his brow with a white linen handkerchief. "I would like to help, for you know how fond I am of you, but it's gone beyond my hands."
The only thing that Hestia found surprising in the Reverend's statement was to hear that he was fond of her, for previously he had barely even deigned to glance at her. She supposed that it was his job to offer kind words to the bereaved, though he evidently thought his job was finished, for he soon left.
A week after his death, her father was buried under the cover of darkness in unconsecrated ground just outside of Truro, beside criminals and thieves. Hestia was not present for the burial, though she intended to visit at some stage to pay her last respects, but then the papers caught wind of the story...
"It's a terrible scandal," Lady Bedford proclaimed, setting down the newspaper and looking at Hestia gravely. "I don't know what we shall do. Your name has been dragged, irrevocably, through the muddied waters of your father's life and death. I don't know what you shall do - no one will ever marry you."
