A Stranger at Castonbury(65)

‘Truly?’ Phaedra cried. ‘Oh, Mrs Moreno, you must know so little of our family. We never do anything in a “proper English” way. My sister Kate had a disastrous Season, and now she is married to a black man, a former American slave, and living in Boston. I had no Season at all, and you see how I live. Giles is marrying Lily, whose grandmother is a Gypsy and is welcome at our house. And Harry’s Elena is Spanish, just as you are. Not to mention my father’s illegitimate daughter.’

Catalina had to laugh at such a litany of scandal. It did make her fears sound small indeed. A product of growing up in a place where she never felt she really belonged. ‘When you put it like that...’

Phaedra nodded. ‘Jamie needs someone who can help him with the huge task of rebuilding and running Castonbury. Who can make him not brood so very much. Who can make him happy, as the rest of us are happy in our marriages. I don’t know at all if that is you, but—well, if you like my brother, I hope you might give him a chance. He is a good man. That is all.’

Catalina nodded as she thought of what Phaedra had said, all the implications of those seemingly simple words that were not really so simple at all. ‘You have given me so much to think about, Lady Phaedra.’

‘Good. Then I can stop being interfering. It doesn’t suit me so well, I fear.’ The carriage slowed as it came into town and Phaedra glanced out of the window again. ‘Shall I drop you outside the Assembly Rooms?’

‘Yes, that would do well, thank you.’ Once Catalina was alone on the walkway, watching the carriage roll away, she knew that what Phaedra had said was true. She had spent too long dwelling on reasons why she and Jamie should not be together. Yet what if there were reasons why they should be?

But first she had to be rid of the pernicious Webster. She looped her reticule closer about her wrist and turned towards Alicia’s house. She glimpsed Alicia’s pale face at one of the upstairs windows, but she quickly vanished when Catalina knocked at the door.

‘Mrs Moreno,’ she said, her voice full of surprise as she opened the door. ‘How nice to see you again so soon.’

‘I hope I am not calling at an inconvenient time,’ Catalina said.

‘Not at all. Please, do come in.’ Alicia led her to the sitting room, where sewing things littered the table. She quickly swept them into their box. ‘I’m afraid the maid is out, but I could probably make some tea.’

‘No, please don’t go to the trouble. I won’t stay long,’ Catalina said. ‘Is your son here?’

‘He is with my neighbour for the afternoon.’

‘Has there been any trouble?’

Alicia shook her head. ‘No, nothing at all. Crispin just likes to visit her, she is so kind to him. I begin to hope Webster has gone from here, after all.’

‘That is not terribly likely, is it?’ Catalina said. ‘He has lost so much. If he is at all the same as he was in Spain, I doubt he would ever go so quietly.’

‘I fear you are right,’ Alicia said with a sigh. ‘I was a fool for ever listening to him for a moment. But I was so desperate....’

‘There was never a chance Jamie was your child’s father, was there?’ Catalina said quietly. She knew there was not, yet somehow she felt compelled to say it aloud. To have everything out in the open.

Alicia squeezed her eyes closed as her cheeks slowly turned red. ‘No, of course not. He never looked at anyone but you in Spain, Mrs Moreno. I—well, I envied that way he would watch you whenever you were nearby. As if there was no one else in the world at all. But he was never anything but kind to me, as were you. You never deserved what we did, Webster and me. Not at all.’

She pushed herself to her feet and went to look out the window at the street below. ‘Crispin’s father was Colonel Chambers.’

‘Chambers?’ Catalina exclaimed. ‘He was your lover?’

‘Yes,’ Alicia said miserably. ‘He was kind to me as well. He liked to talk to me, as his wife had no time to listen to him at all. I was so very lonely, you see.’

Catalina nodded. She did see. She, too, had felt that terrible, cold sense of being alone in the world—when she had lost Jamie. When she thought he was gone for ever and there could never be understanding between them.

‘I did not know I was pregnant until after he died,’ Alicia went on. ‘And of course Mrs Chambers dismissed me. I didn’t know how to take care of myself and my child, or even how to get home.’