To Lenora’s surprise, she did. She drank, and ate, and drank some more. The champagne was sweet and light, tickling her nose, relaxing her muscles. And if she couldn’t forget what Lord Landon had done, she at least didn’t care quite so much about it.
At the end of an hour, she heaved a sigh and slumped back. “Margery, have I ever told you that you are brilliant? Absolutely brilliant?”
Margery gave her a lopsided smile as she studied Lenora over the rim of her own glass. “I am, aren’t I? Either that,” she said with a bleary frown, peering at the now empty bottle, “or we have had entirely too much champagne.”
“No one can have too much champagne,” Lenora declared.
“Very true.”
Lenora threw the remains of her drink back and smacked her lips in appreciation. “Why does this champagne taste so much better than any I’ve had before?”
“It’s the company,” Margery said, motioning to Lenora with her glass. “No stuffy society matrons, no drunken lords.”
In an instant, Lenora’s mood darkened. “Society,” she spat. “I abhor society.” She glowered at the silver dress, still crumpled in the corner, seeing not the fine netting and shimmering silk but an unending line of faces judging every move she made. She lurched upright again. “Do you know, I think my father had the right of it. Leaving this city is a genius idea.”
Margery made a face. “This city is horrid.”
“You’re so right,” Lenora exclaimed. “It is horrid, and I’m determined to be off now.”
Margery smiled in delight. “Then I shall leave as well. It’s no fun without you anyway.” Then she frowned. Blinking uncomprehendingly, she upended the empty bottle over her glass, trying to force the last drop out by sheer will. “Where shall we go off to?”
Lenora frowned. “He will want me to return to our country seat. And you know I hate it there even more than I hate this city.” The wind taken out of her sails, she slumped back again. If London was exhausting in its never-ending social obligations, her father’s house in Kent was the opposite. Cold and austere and removed from any polite society, it was a place of exile more than anything.
Margery’s voice suddenly burst into the quiet of the room.
“Let’s visit my grandmother instead,” she announced as Lenora jumped and tipped sideways. “She was your mother’s godmother. Your father cannot say no.”
Even in her mind-numbed state, an image of sharp brown eyes and a mountain of snow-white hair flashed through Lenora’s head. Along with that came the sound of water lapping at the shore, of pale sand between her toes, of impromptu picnics with Margery and the call of gulls as their companions.
And Hillram. For it was on the Isle of Synne during her visits to Margery’s grandmother that Lenora and Hillram had become such close friends, that he had courted her, had asked her to marry him. And that her life had begun to unravel.
She peered into her empty glass. She had refused to face Hillram’s death and the devastation that had surrounded it for so long. And ever since, she had known nothing but misfortune. She lived daily with the disappointment on her father’s face, with his angry declarations that she was to blame.
Was it possible that, in closing herself off from remembering Hillram, she had locked something important of herself away as well? Was it the lack of that something that had the following two fiancés running from her as fast as they could manage?
Twirling her glass, she watched as the facets grabbed the light, splitting it into a riot of colors. She could go to the Isle, could revisit those glorious places of her youth, could find again that missing piece of herself. And maybe in doing so, she could forgive herself and finally be free of the guilt that had taken hold of her, trapping her like a fish in a tide pool.
Lenora sat forward. A new energy filled her that had nothing at all to do with the champagne. “Let’s do it,” she said, reaching for Margery’s hand. “Let’s go to the Isle.”
Chapter 2
Finally, after thirteen long years, the last of his debts was about to be repaid.
Peter Ashford paused before the massive carved oak door, listening to the waves as they battered some unseen beach far below the cliffs behind him. The wind kicked up, the air heavy and electric, signaling an oncoming storm. A perfect accompaniment to the churning emotions within his chest, the burn of anticipation deep in his gut. He had waited so long for this moment, could almost taste freedom.
And after he was released from this burden, he could go and collect the pound of flesh that was owed him.
He raised his hand, rapping his scarred, work-roughened knuckles on the polished wood. Almost immediately the door swung open. A dour-looking butler stood in the entrance.
“May I help you?”
“Is Lady Tesh at home?”
The servant’s eyes tripped from Peter’s too-long hair to his scuffed boots, no doubt cataloguing every crease in his travel-stained clothing. The man’s expression became even more shuttered, his lip curling ever so slightly. “And may I ask who is inquiring, sir?”
Peter clenched his teeth tight. No one did haughty like the English, that was certain. Reaching into his coat pocket, he extracted a creamy card, one he’d had made up in Boston at Quincy’s insistence. He’d thought it a complete waste of money at the time. He was not the face of their real estate empire, after all—he was more often than not the one to roll up his sleeves and deal with the everyday running of things. What reason did Peter have to carry bits of engraved paper?
As he handed it over, however, he came to see how useful they could be. The butler took the card, glancing down to read the name. He did a double take, his eyes widening almost comically.
“Mr. Ashford?” The man peered at him closely, no doubt looking for some familiarity in the arrangement of his features. “You are the heir, come from America?” When Peter continued to glower at him, the butler flushed a deep red and straightened. “Forgive me, sir, for my impertinence. I’ll show you to her ladyship.”
As he followed the man, Peter took in his surroundings with a sneer. The place screamed old wealth. From the wood banister stained dark from generations of gliding hands, to the portraits of ancestors from centuries past, there was not an inch of space that did not proclaim this was the home of one of the blessed few. Peter’s eyes tightened at the corners. He had no place in this world. And despite his impending title, no desire to be a part of it.
The butler opened a door at the end of the hall. “Mr. Peter Ashford here to see you, my lady,” he announced.
Peter stepped past the butler into the room, his eyes immediately searching for and finding its lone inhabitant. At the sight of her, memories assailed him, so vivid and vicious that for a moment he could not breathe.
The acrid stench of a peat fire, the embers low, their glow barely reaching to where his mother writhed on the bed. Tears drying stiff on his cheeks. His mother’s low moans. Then a knock, the door swinging open, an elderly woman standing in the narrow, dank hall.
He blinked, shook his head sharply, and focused again on the woman who sat before him. She was the same as she had been thirteen years ago, if a bit older. Yet now instead of careful pity on her face, there was a shock so profound, he feared for a moment she would keel over on the spot.