as easily as you think, but Luke is too good at hiding his feelings and you’re not a lot better.’
‘Maybe not, but some things are best hidden, or ignored until they go away.’
‘We shall see,’ Chloe told him with a very direct stare to challenge his refusal to take her hope fraternal love might yet blossom between him and her husband seriously. ‘Lady Virginia worked three unexpected wonders this year, perhaps there’s one to come,’ she said, extending her hand so he had to take the letter he’d been avoiding like a coward, or let it drop to the floor.
‘And perhaps not,’ he replied and accepted it. ‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned.
‘Your great-aunt Virginia taught me too well for me not to, James,’ she replied softly, then left him to read his last letter from a woman he had loved as much as he had it in him to love anyone.
Feeling closed in now, James rolled up the architect’s plans and shut his notebook. He was too distracted to risk riding his favourite stallion into the hills in search of the peace and quiet he craved, so he strode out of the house by the long windows of Lord Laughraine’s library and into the gardens and the wide parkland beyond. Confound it, now his hand was trembling as he checked Virginia’s letter was safely in his pocket. He stood still to let nature cure his uneven breathing with clear autumn air. There; he was almost himself again.
The sounds of busy nature preparing for winter only seemed to emphasise the fact he shouldn’t have come to Raigne, nor found a place in his heart for this rolling and generous countryside and his poor old wreck in the hills. No point bewailing what was done and out here nobody could see him grieve for a woman who simply loved him nearly nine months after her death. He sensed Virginia was weary with the world even before that last brief illness took her from it, but losing her put cracks in the shell he’d grown round his heart half a lifetime ago and they seemed to have been widening ever since.
A whole season had gone by since he came here, sickened by Hebe’s death and looking for who knew what? Now he’d fallen for poor tumbledown old Brackley and become fond of Virginia’s latest victim, as well. He could imagine her impatient frown at that description. Lady Farenze’s Rogues didn’t work—Luke, Tom and Gideon were good men. Three good men and a rogue didn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Now, where was he? Ah, yes, that last season: summer. When Frederick Peters, lawyer, turned back into Sir Gideon Laughraine, heir to a peerage and a magnificent old house and estates. Except Gideon was really Virgil Winterley’s grandson and, come to think of it, James had loved Great-Uncle Virgil as well, so that was two more on the list he couldn’t help loving if he tried. Gideon’s lovely, resolute wife Calliope put another crack in the walls James had built against the world at seventeen and it felt dangerous to care about anyone, but there seemed little point going on pretending he didn’t for much longer.
He should leave Raigne before any one of these people who got under his skin while he wasn’t paying attention got hurt like poor Hebe. As soon as he’d read Virginia’s letter he’d go. He was a landowner in his own right now, even if his house and estate weren’t much to boast about right now. On the unkempt Brackley Estate, James Winterley, rake, adventurer and care-for-nobody would be safe from his family and they would be safe from him. Striding freely now, he reached the arboretum Raigne was famous for among plant collectors in the know. It didn’t matter if their leaves were native wonders or more at home in China or the Americas, the tired and dusty dark green of late summer was shading into the glorious last gasp of gold and amber and fire of autumn that James secretly loved. He planned a modest version of this splendour at Brackley, then decided a well-stocked orchard would be better.
With a sigh he sat on a neat bench for those who had time to rest after the gentle climb. He couldn’t take out Virginia’s final letter and face her loss all over again yet, so he gave himself five minutes to enjoy the view like a tourist. The lingering warmth and richness of an English autumn must have soaked into his thoughts, because he felt much calmer when the screech of a jay reminded him life went on. Out here it hardly mattered if he was coolly arrogant Mr Winterley or a raving lunatic. Mother Nature only required him to be still and not bother her.
At last James took Virginia’s letter from his pocket and examined the outside as if it could take him back to the moment she had finished, folded it precisely and directed it in her familiar, flowing hand. He imagined her getting to the end of her self-imposed task of writing four letters to her ‘boys’ and leaving them to be read after her death—one given out for every season of the year after she died. Missing her never seemed to fade, however many months he had to get used to it.
Luke had been ordered to do what he’d always wanted and discover all Chloe’s secrets, then Virginia’s godson, Tom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, had to face his childhood demons next, before Gideon took on a summer of abiding love and startling revelations. Now it was his turn. It would be a workaday ending to a year of changed lives. The others were lured into doing what Virginia wanted by the promise of James being independent of his half-brother and wasn’t that the biggest irony of all? He smiled wryly at the thought of Virginia baiting her hook with a lie. She knew he could buy a house and estate like the tumbledown one he’d acquired without feeling a dent in his ill-gotten gains.
He wondered why she had done it and why he’d failed to mention his fortune. Even a brother who wasn’t supposed to care a snap of his fingers for anyone could see Luke had lived half a life since he wedded his first wife Pamela. The woman was ten years dead, but some of the damage could never be undone, James concluded bleakly. At least Virginia made the stubborn great idiot change his mind about love and marriage and his great-aunt’s mysterious housekeeper. Now Tom Banburgh and Gideon Laughraine were happy as well and Luke’s new wife had given him his letter with a look that said she knew he wanted to sob like a child at the sight of it. Heaven forbid Virginia expected some impossible love match from him because he’d hate her to be disappointed. Not that she was here to be anything. He tested the weight of several pages of closely written hot-pressed paper and still hesitated to break the familiar seal of two Vs interlocked that always made him smile at their effrontery.
For goodness’ sake, boy, why don’t you get on and open the dratted thing?
The voice popped into his head as if Virginia was pacing about this manmade glade waiting to have her say and as impatient with shilly-shallying as ever. James looked round as furtively as he’d done as a boy when his great-aunt caught him in mischief and she felt so acutely present he only just stopped himself peering round this glade to see where she was hiding herself.
Don’t be ridiculous, it didn’t take supernatural powers to read the mind of a grubby schoolboy then and you’re not so different now.
So much for the calming effects of nature and a serene autumn day; fighting a superstitious shiver, James fixed his gaze on the only part of her that could be real today and lifted the seal with a neat penknife she would have confiscated on sight in the old days. Anything was preferable to the madness of conjuring up the beloved, infuriating, marvel of a woman he missed so badly nine months on from her death.
Darling James
Now don’t sit there thinking, Who? Me? I love you and always have done. From the very first moment I laid eyes on you as a squalling brat I knew you were special when you decided to trump your mother’s cast-iron certainty you would follow her family and came out a Winterley instead. Now I love you for your own sake and you have to accept that, James. You are a good, loving and, yes, a lovable man, and it’s about time you realised it.
So why did I do all this? You know as well as I do there’s no need to
