The door thudded again, this time on the exit of Henry Beecham.
The minister snatched up his Bible and, with a hunted look, ducked out after Beecham.
With every exit, that thud was sounding more and more significant. The sound of finality.
Which it was not.
Of course he could fix this problem. There was no need to panic. He turned back to the mumchance assembly. “I only need to know what the problem is,” he said.
Belinda and Caro exchanged veiled looks.
He did not like that. “Say it to my face,” he said, and his voice had a grim note in it that made him wonder whether his instincts had recognized something that his brain had not yet. In an hour, perhaps, he would not feel so calm at all.
“I believe that she told you,” Belinda’s husband said helpfully. “Doesn’t think you love her.”
Belinda shot her husband a glare.
Ah. But the man was right. At present, Alex’s truths held no value or meaning to her. He would not know how to speak them persuasively until he cracked this riddle. It would take more than an hour to do that. Why do you doubt me, Gwen? What was the true cause?
Little Madeleine spoke. “Why did the bride run away, Mama?”
“Because she got scared,” Caroline said, smoothing down her daughter’s hair. “Uncle Alex is going to fix it by proving to her that she doesn’t need to be scared anymore.”
“Does Uncle Alex love her?”
“Of course he does,” Gerry snapped.
Hearing this truth from Gerry’s mouth brought a wave of foreboding over Alex. Christ, if Gerry could believe this but not Gwen—
“Well,” Gerard continued gruffly. He took a seat at the desk, graceless as a sack of turnips. “I’ll say no more, then. But it’s a damned shame. Family could have used three million pounds.”
“Oh, Gerard,” Caroline sighed. Alex opened his mouth to deliver the truly cutting reply that his brother’s asinine remark deserved—and a nudge of intuition stopped his tongue.
“Could we, then?” he asked mildly.
Gerard’s eyes, meeting his, widened infinitesimally—then dropped. “Who couldn’t?” he muttered.
Alex did not look away. A possibility, theretofore unthinkable, spun through him. He did not like unthinkable possibilities. He liked none of this. You love me as much as you love Heverley End. Is that what she thought she was to him? A problematic millstone around his neck? Some unwanted weight?
A glimmer of inspiration struck him. “I’ll fix this,” he said slowly.
At the Beechams’, he discovered that Gwen had fled to Heaton Dale, and Elma had taken to bed. She called him up to her sitting room, where she subsided across a chaise longue, tipping her head to the cold compress held by a solicitous maid. “Do not chase after her,” she advised. “You will waste the trip. She would not permit even me to accompany her. I have never seen her in such a state!”
He did not argue. “If she asks after me—”
Elma took charge of the compress and sat up. “She won’t, Mr. Ramsey. I tell you, she has lost her wits. I reasoned with her all the way to the station. I might as well have been speaking to a lump of clay!”
He mustered a smile. “If she asks,” he said, “tell her I have gone to Heverley End.”
The compress thumped to the floor. “But why?” Elma frowned. “That’s the opposite direction! Surely you can’t mean to listen to me? You must go after her!”
He laughed. “And so I will,” he said. But first he had to find Gwen what he had promised her: the proof she required.
Heverley End was a Jacobean cottage of Portland stone, weathered and pocked by the centuries of salt that had scoured its golden face. It sat atop a serpentine cliff veined with copper, and its mullioned windows overlooked the surf’s retreat. In Alex’s memory it was fearsome, a place better fit to abandonment and hauntings. In his more recent imaginings on the journey here, men with bowler hats had menaced the perimeter.
The truth was far less remarkable. The house was pretty in the setting sun. Quaint, even. And if Barrington had yet visited his new possession, he’d made no changes to the staff. The gatekeeper recognized Alex from boyhood, and the front door opened on another familiar face: the housekeeper, Mrs. Regis, still as spare and tall as a Maypole. He remembered her as a stiff and bloodless presence, always hovering a few paces from the doctors and nursemaids. Now, to his surprise, she insisted on crying briefly into her apron before leading him on a tour of the old terrain.
As he followed her, he grew conscious of a stupid disappointment. He would have taken pleasure from fighting his way into the house. It would have seemed fitting, for he’d certainly fought his way out of it, once upon a time.