Page 32 of The Earl's Inconvenient Houseguest

‘One of Ned’s sheepdogs has just had pups. He might be tempted to part with one of them.’

‘Any bitches?’ Not that Rafe cared as he’d pay a king’s ransom for the dratted thing to make his brother’s wish come true. ‘Only it seems cruel to saddle a boy dog with the name Mary.’

She smiled then it melted as she uncovered the remains of a book that was barely recognisable as such. ‘Beyond hope.’

‘I fear you are correct. A favourite volume?’

She traced her finger along the fire-frayed edge. ‘My mother gave me this the year before she died. I always meant to read it and now...’ Realising that her matter-of-fact façade had briefly slipped, she shrugged to knock it back in place. ‘It was a book of poems and I have never really been one for poems. As you might have gathered, I prefer direct speech to flowery language. I have always been the same.’ She stared at the book, lost again for a second before she forced that away.

‘It’s hard to lose a parent. I know because I have lost both—although to be fair only one to death. I had mislaid the other, or rather she mislaid us the year Archie was born.’ He wasn’t usually one to share confidences, and especially not that one which still cut deep, but hoped that if he shared one of his, she might feel more inclined to unburden herself. He suspected she needed to. That everything was boiling up inside like steam in a kettle and that was never healthy.

‘Your mother left?’

He nodded while he concentrated on the stick which he prodded in the ashes. ‘My father, God rest him, was a constant source of disappointment to her and his youngest child was the last straw. She ran away with a shipping merchant and none of us has heard hide nor hair of her since even though she moved to Bristol not ten miles away.’

‘I’m sorry.’ And he could tell by the crinkle between her eyebrows that she was.

‘It is what it is. To be honest, I rarely think of it. It’s always easier, isn’t it, burying things rather than airing them? Hurts less.’ Myriad complicated emotions skittered across her features before she masked them, giving him a window into how hard she worked to bury everything at all cost. ‘Perhaps not always the most sensible course of action, though.’ He paused his search to study her, to see if his words were getting through, but she had turned her back to him. ‘Sometimes they fester, and that is never good.’

‘I suppose not.’ She had retrieved another damaged book, or at least that was what he assumed it was, then discarded it as if it was of no consequence. ‘But it’s sad for Archie to have grown up without the love of a mother.’ She was deflecting. Such a subtle diversion from the topic, she had become a master of it. Rafe decided to play along until the convoluted path provided the perfect opportunity for him to circle back.

‘He knows no different and has always had me and my father so he has grown up smothered in love. My father and he adored one another.’

‘Just as you and he adore one another.’ She smiled as she briefly gazed his way. ‘I doubt many older brothers would give up a successful career in the army to care for a younger sibling.’

‘Soldiering was always a means to an end.’ The little square of soot he had been mining was now exhausted, so Rafe stood to stretch his limbs then moved to a different patch. ‘My father excelled in being a devoted father, but not much else, so somebody had to put food on the table and a roof over Archie’s head.’ In that respect, Rafe had had to grow up fast. He had also had to be the one to push his brother to reach his full potential, because his well-meaning and self-sacrificing father had no clue where to start, but it felt disloyal to his memory to criticise the way he brought Archie up. ‘And we certainly couldn’t afford to send me to university to train for any other career, so I ended up in a uniform. It was no great sacrifice to discard it.’

He jabbed his stick in a fresh layer of debris and set about excavating it. ‘Fortunately, there was still some money left in the house to keep us going after my father passed and I paid his creditors, so once we sold up we moved from Somerset to the capital. A fresh start in Cheapside. Miles away from the indelible stain of my poor father’s crushing debts. Gutter Lane to be exact, just off it, but Cheapside sounds so much better and, in truth, Gutter Lane is a misnomer because it is actually a rather pleasant road.’

‘I know. I grew up in Cheapside.’ The second she let that slip she stiffened, her dark eyes shuttering. ‘It was always an excellent place for shopping.’ That was said with such breeziness they might have been at a summer garden party rather than in the charred ruins of her home. Clearly the estrangement from her father and her childhood home still hurt too. More emotions she had buried and likely festering away unchecked while the stubborn witch denied it.

Instead of prodding the ground, perhaps he should prod her a bit to get her to open up. Dr Able was right. All this stoic but deft avoidance was unhealthy. ‘Ned said your father still lives there.’ She stiffened some more. ‘Would you like me to send word to him about what has happened?’

He assumed he would see some glimmer of regret or longing for family in her expression. The need to reconnect to her kin back home now that she had lost everything here. What he did not expect was anger. A fury so visceral and all-encompassing it shimmered off her in waves. Almost as if she were a firework and he had inadvertently lit her fuse. ‘If that is your unsubtle hint that your hospitality is finite and you want rid of us, kindly say so!’

‘Whoa!’ Rafe instinctively held up both palms until his torn shoulder protested and he was forced to settle for just the one. ‘Where on earth did that come from?’

Her fists were clenched. ‘I am not being shipped back to my father! I would rather sleep in the street than darken his door again!’

‘I wasn’t for a moment suggesting you would be shipped anywhere, and my hospitality extends for as long as you and your aunt need it.’ A rapid retreat seemed the most prudent in case she used those fists on him. ‘I merely asked if you would like me to write to contact him. I thought it might bring you and your aunt some comfort. Heal some rifts.’ He spread his palms placatingly. ‘Mend some of the broken bridges because I had heard the pair of you were estranged. In my unique and clumsy way I was trying to help but I can see now that it was a bad idea.’ He huffed out a sigh, feeling dreadful that he had kicked that particular hornet’s nest and more dreadful that she carried so much pain. ‘I am sorry, Sophie. I did not mean to upset you or add to your distress.’

Her cheeks coloured as she swallowed back her anger, as if she too was surprised by the strength of her outburst. ‘And I am sorry as well. I should not have overreacted.’ That mortification at her overreaction was written all over her lovely face, and by her expression and her posture she looked ready to run. Although why and where he had no clue—but it bothered him. Everything about her reaction to this tragedy bothered him. She bothered him. Far too much than he was prepared to contemplate. ‘I am already heartily ashamed of myself for it. But...’ While she struggled for the right words to explain it he gestured to the carnage in sympathy.

‘At this precise moment, if anyone is entitled to overreact, it is you. That you are so calm and reasonable about everything is a miracle, all things considered.’ And a huge worry. He’d watched men lose their minds on the battlefield for less, and once lost they could never find it again. ‘If I were you, I’d be rocking in a corner somewhere with my head in my hands or ranting to the heavens at the unfairness of it all.’

‘That wouldn’t help my aunt.’

‘It wouldn’t—but it might make you feel better. I quite enjoy a good rant and rave. Its cathartic. When life gets on top of me, I gallop to a field somewhere and then bellow at the sky. I like to slam the odd door too. And stomp. I always feel unburdened after a good stomp. Between you and me, I’m not afraid to admit I’ve succumbed to the waterworks a time or two too. Because that helps as well.’ Rafe was prepared to wager his entire inheritance that the buttoned-up, matter-of-fact warrior before him hadn’t allowed herself to shed a single tear in years. ‘I wouldn’t judge you for it if you did, Sophie...because if I might be so bold as to suggest it, you look like you need to.’

She ignored him to heave a big beam to one side to free another book from the rubble. It was filthy but otherwise complete. ‘Aunt Jemima’s Bible.’ She used her skirt to remove some of the dirt from the cover. ‘She will be glad this survived although it might need recovering.’ She was changing the subject and he had no choice but to let her. ‘There’s a bookbinder in Hornchurch not far from here who always does a good job. He recovered Mrs Fitzherbert’s prized collection of Marlow’s plays. They were family heirlooms passed down from her father, but they were falling apart after too many years of being loved. They looked as good as new when they came back. I shall take this there too.’ Without stomping, she walked to the edge of the destruction to place the book with the carved fragment from the bedframe, then took herself to the furthest point of the rubble from him to continue her search. No doubt putting as much distance as she could between herself and the uncomfortable conversation Rafe was failing to have with her.

In case he tried to restart it, she turned her back to him and carried on wittering about the skills of the bookbinder in Hornchurch in great detail. Thwarted, he sighed and resigned himself to listening.

People dealt with grief in their own way, he supposed, and in their own time too. There was no point in trying to hasten the process if she wasn’t ready to deal with it. It had taken his father two years of futile hope before he accepted that his wife wasn’t coming back. Even then he had still held on to some. Probably still held it until the day he died too as Rafe had found her enamel likeness in his bedside table when he had packed up his father’s things.

Maybe it was easier to hold that hope than to face the stark acceptance?

And what did Rafe know about such things anyway? He was no better. Love, in all its forms, was a tricky, complicated and destructive emotion. His one serious foray into romantic love had ended in heartache and he had used that horrid experience to erect tall battlements to prevent him ever succumbing to it again. The love for family was even more complicated. He both hated his mother for what she had done and yet part of him yearned for her still. And in his youth he had both loved Archie more on the back of it while resenting him at the same time. That resentment had grown, he was ashamed to admit, as Rafe had strode from boyhood to manhood, and in the army he had cultivated a persona that had a brother, but one he never talked about in detail. When that course of action bit him royally on the arse and he had had his heart stamped on, he had resented Archie more. Yet the overwhelming love he had for the scamp had never waned, and once their father had died, it was as inconceivable to Rafe that he would not drop everything to protect and care for him as it was that he would drop Archie for a woman.

It was all so complicated, he preferred not to think about it much nowadays. But unlike Sophie, at least he had thought about it. Thought about it and come to terms with it. It was what it was, and if he had his time over, there wasn’t much he would change. No matter what he had felt inside, no matter what unfair resentment he had had towards his brother, or his mother, or his father and his crushing debts, Rafe knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he would still be exactly where he was now. By Archie’s side. No matter what the sacrifice.

His stick found something hard and, while he philosophised, he chiselled it out, then cleaned it with his thumb. The small hexagonal leather trinket box looked like the sort people kept jewellery in, so perhaps this was indeed something one of the ladies thought precious. ‘Sophie, I think I’ve found something.’ She turned as he opened it and held it out to her, pleased with himself. But instead of joy that the gold wedding band had survived the fire, she recoiled in horror then froze.

Almost as if she had seen a ghost.

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