Pit Bank Wench (35 page)

But that reluctance to answer had not ended the matter. Paul wiped again at the moisture rapidly beading on his brow. Carver had listened to the ultimatum put to him, listened silent but stony-eyed; only when Paul had declared his intention of finding the girl and marrying her had he thrown the pen he was holding across the desk and strode out of the study.

Paul had hoped that in his absence his brother would come to accept that the feelings he had for Emma were deep-rooted and lasting, that his love was real and not the infatuation Carver always claimed. But he seemed, if anything, even more opposed to any marriage between them. Nevertheless Paul would find Emma, and he would marry her.

Bringing the horse to a standstill as it crested a low rise he felt tiredness sweep over him, a weariness that had plagued him since leaving the port of Liverpool and one that sleep did not relieve. When he found Emma, then he would rest.

Eyes stinging from the sweat trickling into them, he blinked. Across the heath in the far distance he could just make out the figure of a woman, her back toward him as she walked away. He blinked again then dashed away the perspiration. The rays of the sun were slanting red-gold across the scorched heather, slanting on hair the colour of moonkissed wheat.

‘Emma!’ His cry startling the placid horse it threw back its head, ears pricking.

It had to be her. No other girl he had ever seen had hair of such a wonderful colour. Touching his heels to the animal’s sides, he sent it galloping across the heath.

She had watched her child walk towards her, his first baby steps faltering and unsure. Watched him as Daisy set him on the ground, watched him stand unmoving until the sound of the girl’s voice caught his ear.

He had smiled then, showing the four tiny teeth that had given him so much distress in the cutting, smiled as he bumped into a chair pushed under the table.

That had been the final blow to her slowly breaking heart. Her child was blind!

Emma clutched the frail body tight against her own. She had known for a year, known her baby’s sight was failing; she had prayed so hard that it would not happen, prayed he would not suffer for what she had done. But her prayers had gone unanswered. The child would pay for the sin of its father, and pay again for the sin of its mother.

It was
her
doing! Emma’s dry sobs dropped into the silence.
She
had caused the child’s terrible affliction. It had been a sin to ask for a potion, a sin to try to take the life of an unborn child; yet still she had drunk the mixture that woman had given her, a mixture that had inflicted blindness!

She had vowed never to return to Doe Bank, but Jerusha was there. Jerusha would help, she had herbs and medicines. But Jerusha could not help. She had shaken her head as Emma had sobbed out her story. Her herbs and skills were not enough, she had said, it would take a skill far greater than hers to bring sight to those eyes. Nor must Emma blame herself, she had added, touching her veined hand to the girl’s. It was no potion had caused this blindness.

But it was . . . it was! Her senses screamed their pain. It was her fault her child was blind!

‘Emma!’

The sound of hooves drumming over the bone-hard ground seized at her brain but it did not drive away the thoughts that imprisoned it.

‘Emma!’

It came again and this time she turned her head, looking behind her. Still half-lost in her misery, she glanced at the figure on horseback.

Paul? Instinctively she reached a hand forward then withdrew it sharply.

‘Emma . . . oh, Emma, I
knew
I would find you!’

Swinging from the saddle, he came forward then hesitated as she stepped away from him.

‘I realise how long it has been. God, how I realise! But it is over now, we can be married. Oh, Emma . . .’

‘No!’ Her eyes showing the pain in her heart, she stepped further from him. ‘It’s too late, Paul, I can never marry you.’

‘Emma?’ He reached for her hand. ‘You can’t mean that? If it’s because I’ve been gone so long . . .’

‘No.’ She shook her head, sending sunlight sparkling through its length. ‘It’s not your absence.’

‘Then what? Tell me, my love.’

How could she? How could she tell him his elder brother had raped her? It had caused enough sorrow already, and she would not set brother against brother.

Hitching the child higher on her hip, she saw a look of understanding cross his face as he caught the gleam of gold on her left hand.

‘I was gone too long,’ he said softly.

Unable to answer, to voice her feelings, she watched him remount. ‘I loved you, Emma.’ He smiled wearily down. ‘I think I always will.’

In her arms the child turned, its small hand dislodging the shawl she had wrapped about its head.

Glancing at it, Paul let out a swift breath. Smiling up at him were two coal black eyes and the evening light glistened on fine strands of silver set amidst the sable hair.

The child was Carver’s.

Understanding giving way to anger, he whipped the horse around.

Emma Price was not his brother’s wife, but the child she held in her arms could have been fathered by none other than Carver.

Why in hell had they not sent for him sooner?

Carver Felton sat in the study of Felton Hall.

Men on their way home from the Topaz mine had found his brother almost unconscious on the heath. They had carried him to Doe Bank where Jerusha Paget had cared for him. But the woman was a fraud, what did she know of medicine? Bloody herbs and plants! How could they cure Paul’s illness?

They had at last sent to Felton Hall and Carver had gone at once, brought Paul home with him to be cared for. But the doctor he’d summoned had shaken his head. It was too late. As it had proved too late for many in Doe Bank.

Typhoid. Paul must have contracted the disease in Liverpool, from one of the boats. Even now, almost six months after his brother’s death, Carver was not over the shock of it.

He twisted the paper held in his hands.

The doctor had carefully described the precautions that must be taken in the house. None but Carver himself had contracted the sickness, but he had lived while Paul . . .

The disease had raced through the village like wildfire, helped by the hot dry weather. The Paget woman had died too, but not until the worst was over. Age and overwork with the sick had proved her undoing.

He glanced at the paper twisting in his fingers, the paper the old woman had sent to him and which he had not yet brought himself to read.

Paul had asked her to write it. The man who’d delivered it had been awkward and afraid but refused to give it to any but Carver himself. Then he’d refused the shilling held out to him in exchange.

Carver had thought that strange, a man on the wages he must earn refusing a shilling. But the look the man gave him as he’d turned away had been stranger still for it was one of revulsion. Doe Bank men had no love for Carver Felton, that much he had long known, but the look he had been given that day was something new.

He would not have thought that old woman capable of writing though her eyes on the one occasion they’d met seemed to look into his soul. He opened the paper. Her hand had obviously been unused to such a task, but the writing was legible.

‘Excuse my interrupting you, sir.’

Carver looked up as his butler entered the study.

‘There’s a lady asking to see you. I told her you were busy but she was most insistent.’

Emma! Carver’s breathing quickened. She had come at last, come to see Paul. God, if only he had not been so selfish, so beset by pride . . . But it was more than pride had caused him to withhold permission for that girl and his brother to marry, it was jealousy. He too loved the woman his brother loved, that reason and no other had been the ultimate cause of his denying them marriage.

If only he could turn back the clock, given them what both had wanted. But chance of that was gone, it was too late, but now she was here, now at least he could offer some reparation for the harm he had done.

‘Who is the lady, Morton, do you know?’

‘Yes sir,’ the butler answered. ‘It is Miss Cara Holgate.’

The headiness of a moment ago fading swiftly, Carver opened a drawer of his desk, dropping the paper into it unread.

Cara Holgate! He had seen nothing of her since the evening he had caught her cavorting naked with her cousin. Now what did she want with him?

‘Shall I tell the lady you will join her in the drawing room, sir?’

‘No!’ Carver shut the drawer. ‘You may not tell the lady that, Morton. Tell her
she
may join
me
here in the study or she may leave.’

‘Well, Cara.’ Carver’s eyes glittered darkly as she lowered herself into a chair. ‘I don’t think either of us could truthfully call this a pleasure, but whatever I owe it to please say directly . . . I have little wish to prolong this meeting.’

‘Nor I.’ She folded her gloved hands against her amber velvet skirt.

‘Then why come here?’

‘Not for myself, Carver.’ Green-gold eyes regarded him steadily. ‘But on behalf of my cousin.’

‘The pretty Melissa.’ A flicker of satisfaction crossed Carver’s face at the look his remark brought to Cara’s. That jealousy was still present, if anything even more pronounced. ‘What can she want from me?’

Cara’s eyes were venomous. ‘It seems she already has something from you – something you are going to have to acknowledge.’

‘You interest me, Cara. Pray go on?’

‘Melissa tells me she is three months with child.’ Cara drew in a sharp, satisfied breath. ‘She also tells me
you
are the father.’

A child! Carver’s senses quickened for the second time in a few minutes. If only it had been the Doe Bank girl, that pit bank wench come to say she was carrying Paul’s child. The news might well have riven him with jealousy but he would have hidden it, just as he had hidden his own feelings for her for so long; at least then he would have had some part of his brother left. But this was not Emma Price, and his brother had not fathered a child.

Forcing the pain that never truly left him into the background, Carver gave a thin smile but his dark eyes held no humour.

‘Does she now? You are sure she does not mean Arthur Payne?’

‘That fool?’ Cara snapped. ‘She would not let him get within a yard of her.’

‘He did not get within a yard of her.’ He leaned back in his chair, fingertips touching his chin. ‘And you, my dear, try as you might, could not get within her! Therefore you think to place the burden upon me.’

‘I place it where it should be. You seduced Melissa when unknown to me she called at Felton Hall to explain what you saw that evening. Now she is carrying your child.’

‘I see.’ He lowered his hands. ‘You know me better than that, Cara my dear. You know I would not touch a woman who had made love to another man, much less one who had made love to a woman. In short, your lover is not only unnatural, she is also a liar!’

In her lap, Cara’s hands tightened. ‘You deny you are the father?’

‘Emphatically.’

‘Melissa is more than willing to swear . . .’

‘I have no doubt.’ The smile remained fixed on his mouth but the ice in his eyes was unmistakable. ‘But Melissa would do well to think carefully before making any such allegation, for pleasurable as I would find it to strip you of every last thing you own, I am willing to deny myself . . . just this one time!’

‘You should have denied yourself three months ago! Now you must pay the piper.’

‘Not for any tune you call, Cara. I will not go into detail here, we will save that for the courts. Let me say instead that if need be I can produce irrefutable evidence to prove what you claim is untrue. So, you see, if your delectable cousin is truly with child, which I very strongly doubt, then I advise you look elsewhere for a scapegoat!’

Watching the door slam behind her he slumped into his chair. It had all been for nothing, his planning and scheming to build a bigger, more profitable business, one he could pass on to his son. There would be no son. There would be no child to inherit, either his or his brother’s. Why had it all gone so sour? Why had fate turned so viciously against him?

Why hadn’t he agreed to Paul’s marrying the Doe Bank girl? But he had not, and now it was too late. Why . . . why had he refused?

Closing his eyes, he thumped one fist hard on the desk. He knew why not. God forgive him, he knew why!

Chapter Twenty-Four

The work would soon be finished and the men employed to dig the new waterway would move on. Emma looked across to the tents huddled together like a flock of forlorn sheep. Some had talked of moving on, looking for fresh navigation work; others had talked of going home to their families in Ireland.

When they were gone she too would have to leave. She should have done that as soon as her child was born. She watched him now, a sturdy two year old, walking between Daisy and the young man who had asked her to be his wife – Emma’s son laughing up at them as they tickled a buttercup beneath his chin. But he would never see the tiny flower that delighted him so, never see the colours of the sunset or the love in his mother’s eyes.

Liam had taken them to the doctor in the town. Emma felt the same overwhelming grief rise in her now as she had felt then when the man had shaken his head. Like Jerusha before him he had not the skill to cure the blindness that held her baby’s eyes, nor did he know of any who had.

They had journeyed back to Plovers Croft in silence, Liam carrying the child. Only when they were once more in the room he had built for her and Daisy had he spoken.

‘Emma, you know I love you, and I love the boy too. You don’t have to bear this sorrow alone. Marry me, Emma, let me be a father to him. I will take care of the two of you, I swear by the saints I will.’