task to dear Chloe’s satisfaction. I hope she and Luke are happy together by now and Gideon attained his heart’s desire, by the way? I set the other boys quests they were eager to carry out, deep down, except perhaps for my beloved Tom. I had to push him to going back to the place he least wants to go to for his own sake.
You know almost as well as he does how it feels to be damaged and manipulated by those who are supposed to care for you the most and yet do not. I trust you to watch out for Tom and see he is not going wilder than ever since I made him return to Dayspring Castle and face his demons.
James looked up from his letter with a broad grin at the idea of Tom doing anything wild without his rather fierce new love at his side. The new Marchioness of Mantaigne was sure to outrage the ton as carelessly as her husband, but she would love him until their dying day. James felt the lightness of knowing all three were deeply and abidingly happy with their chosen brides and realised Virginia was right, he had worried about them—at least the ones he knew about. Gideon was a new comrade-in-arms and for some reason his wife, Callie, felt almost like a sister. Who would have thought he’d feel fraternal towards such a spectacular beauty as Lady Laughraine, bastard daughter of Lord Laughraine’s son and true heiress of Raigne?
That odd idea brought him neatly back to people who didn’t know themselves. Callie still thought of herself as a superannuated schoolmarm, even now she was reconciled with her doting husband. He frowned at the idea he’d settled near his newest siblings of the heart to protect them from wolves who saw Callie’s vulnerability and tried to exploit it. No, he had fallen for broken-down and neglected Brackley Manor House at first sight and that was quite foolish enough to be going on with. Almost feeling the impatience of Virginia’s letter in his hand, he went on reading as if she was here to nag him into it.
As for Gideon, I think you would like him and his wife if you would let yourself.
James laughed and shook his head, she would have enjoyed the joke that he was perilously close to being both friend and kin to the pair of them after years of walking alone. Nobody could accuse Virginia of lacking humour at his expense.
I know you have the makings of a fine man in you, James, and I trust you to be the strength at the heart of the Winterley family in the years to come. You have a power for good in you that you refuse to trust. I want you to know yourself better than you do today, lest you become a lonely and frustrated man and the true glories of this life pass you by. The pity of it is your mother poured all her frustrated ambition into you as a boy and you were still too fine a human being to let her turn you into a fool and envy your brother his future title and possessions. I only wish she and your father were blessed with more children to dilute her folly.
Still, at least you and Luke managed to love each other as boys. When Luke married Pamela because of some maggot your father got in his head about getting the boy wed and begetting heirs since he knew he was dying himself, she was determined to destroy that love, because she knew he didn’t love her. She was incapable of feeling true love for another human being, although she craved it as a miser does gold. I know she did something terrible to you both, but I dare not probe the sore places she left you both. I love the two of you too much in life to risk it, so in death I can say your quest will take longest, which is why I left you until last.
You have to learn to love and trust a lover, my dearest. Be she mistress, wife, or friend, I want you to open your heart to love as you never have since the little witch Luke married cast some wicked spell over you both and froze you in your tracks at seventeen. That’s so heartbreakingly young to cut yourself off from the most dangerous and breathtakingly wonderful of human emotions, my love. I was blissfully happy with the love of my life and couldn’t wish I’d never met him, even when he died, and grief and fury seemed likely to send me mad for a while. Love is something to celebrate and treasure, never a burden to be avoided at all costs as you appear to think.
So, even if it takes you until your deathbed, darling James, your quest is to learn to love with all the strength and humour and power in that great heart of yours. Don’t shake your head; I know you do your best to keep it secret from the rest of the world, but you are a special person and I value you as such. Luke always wanted to love his brother and I felt so sorry for you both when it became clear the main purpose of your mother’s life was to prevent him doing so. What you choose to do about your frosty relations with your half-brother is up to you. If you think it right to hold aloof from your family, I ache for you all, but know you have good reason.
James looked up from his letter to stare unseeingly into the soft autumn afternoon. Oh, yes, he had very good reason to stay away from those he loved. It ached in his heart as if a tight band had been strapped round his chest at seventeen and would never be loosed this side of the grave. He shook his head and found himself a coward for refusing to explore it. Revisit that pain and anger and sense of worthlessness, when all that could be done was move on as best he could? No; this time Virginia was wrong. Hadn’t he said he’d be her only failure?
‘Three out of four is a fine record, darling,’ he murmured as he stared unseeingly at the soft, serene blue of the October sky.
And a full house trumps it every time, came the reply so certainly he looked for Virginia’s shade again, then called himself a fool for expecting it to show up for him. There was a little more in her missive from some time last year, when she had put her affairs in order while she had the strength and certainty to do so. How he admired and loved the one woman he could safely adore until his dying day. Come to think of it; if she was ordering him to give his heart, wasn’t she already too late?
Cheating, my boy, the gruff almost-sound of her voice reproached him and what he wouldn’t give to actually see and speak to her one last time? That’s a different sort of love. Virgil and I simply tried to give you and your brother and Tom a firm foundation of love to build your lives on. Love between a man and a woman, full and true and without boundaries, is very different to the deep affection of true family. That love is an undeserved gift that can light up a whole lifetime with the joy and surprise of it, for however long or short a time you are together. I want you to love like that, James, I need you to love truly if I am ever to have peace and join my far-more-saintly Virgil in heaven one day.
‘Now that’s blackmail,’ James muttered with a frown at the circling buzzard that had taken off from the perch where it had been dreaming in the sun at the top of the tallest oak in Lord Laughraine’s beloved woods. ‘I’ve made love to some of the loveliest women in this land and quite a few further afield and not fallen in love with a single one of them. If I couldn’t love any of them, I’m beyond heavenly intervention.’
No, just looking in the wrong place, the not-quite sound of Virginia’s distinctive voice in his head insisted stubbornly.
James felt that restriction where his heart ought to be again and did his best to ignore it. Did she expect him to find a saint? The very idea made him snort with derision. Even the slightest hint of the saintly martyr in a woman would make him play the devil more than ever. No, he didn’t have it in him to give himself wholeheartedly to any deep human emotion, let alone loving a woman who’d preach at him and pry into his sooty soul. Shaking his head at the very idea, he forced himself to read the final farewell of the most matchless woman he’d ever met.
Whatever you do, live well and never close your heart to loving those around you if you can’t let go of your pride or your tender conscience long enough to truly love a partner for life. I was lucky to adore your great-uncle from the moment I met him and perhaps that’s not a miracle given to many of us sinners. You must believe that if I could have had a son I wanted him to be just like you, James. Know that now and please shrug off the self-loathing you struggle with for some reason you never would confide in me.
I find it hardest of all to stop writing to you, but now my pen is in need of mending and I am weary of this wide and wonderful earth of ours at
