Gordon was told to treat him—and any of the members of the Adaire family—with the respect due their rank, understanding that he was the gardener’s boy, nothing more.
He tried to obey, but he never could when it came to Jennifer. Whenever he could escape Sean, he would steal away and Jennifer would meet him, either on the shores of Loch Adaire or one of the paths through the hills. She’d been his partner in adventure, his friend, and then so much more.
Now he knocked softly, but when he didn’t hear anything, he grabbed the latch and pushed open the door.
The cottage was surprisingly spacious, having a main room, a small kitchen, and two rooms in the back. One of those had been his, and the larger one had belonged to his parents.
After closing the door behind him, he stood in the main room looking around. He had the curious sensation of having stepped back in time. Nothing had changed in five years.
No, there was one change. Betty was no longer here.
He walked to the fireplace and picked up a framed charcoal drawing on the mantel. Years ago, an itinerant Irish worker had come to Adaire Hall. He’d worked for Sean, who had labeled the man a drifter. He hadn’t spent his time playing cards or drinking. Instead, the man was given to scribbling in a book of blank pages.
When he left the Hall, he’d given Gordon one of those scribbles, a portrait of Betty. He’d been eleven years old at the time and amazed at the man’s talent. Now, looking at the lifelike portrait, he could almost hear his mother’s voice.
Betty had never been maternal. Everything she’d done for him, from sewing a rip in his shirt to feeding him, had been accompanied by grumbling, condemning looks, and a switch more than once. He’d wanted to ask why she disliked him so much, but the question would have been answered with another beating.
The portrait was uncannily accurate and not the least complimentary, a fact that Betty evidently hadn’t seen. Her cheeks were full, her face round. Her mouth was small, pursed in this portrait just as it had often been in life. Her eyes were brown and narrowed, an expression that was commonplace. As if Betty didn’t see anything pleasing about the world around her.
Her voice was raspy, the tone always this side of exasperated.
He remembered one incident when he was eight years old and had broken a bowl. He hadn’t meant to do it; it had been an accident, but Betty didn’t see it that way.
“You clumsy, worthless, disgusting piece of trash! See what you’ve done now?”
She reached for the strap by the door and proceeded to beat him until his legs bled. When she was done, or her arm tired, she’d thrown the shards of the bowl at him, one of them cutting his cheek. He still had the scar to remind him of his mother.
Yet she was as given to worshipping the Adaire family as Sean. No one was as handsome as Harrison or as talented. No one’s future looked brighter than the boy made earl.
When Gordon had gone to study with Harrison and Jennifer, she hadn’t been impressed at the countess’s generosity.
“You’ll get ideas above your station, boy. You just remember he’s the earl.”
Although he doubted that he’d ever need Latin or debate Pythagorean theory, he was determined to be educated, to learn as much as Harrison knew or even more.
Yet he’d never appreciated, until he’d been nearly grown, Betty’s influence. She’d given him something he’d not expected: independence. He’d been forced to depend on himself, to grow a skin thick enough to endure his own mother’s antipathy.
For that he would have thanked Betty, had she still been alive.
“If you’re not a ghost, then you must be himself.”
He turned to see his father leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom, one hand clutching it to hold himself up.
Sean was the one who looked like a ghost. Clad in his nightshirt, he was rail thin, his pallor so great that Gordon put the frame back on the mantel and walked quickly toward him.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed, I’m thinking,” he said, reaching his father.
He put his arm around Sean’s waist and walked with him back to the bed.
“I’ll not have you playing nursemaid.”
“Someone obviously has to,” Gordon said.
“I’ve got a nurse, thanks to Lady Jennifer. She insists on sending me a girl around the clock. I think she’s afraid I might die without someone notifying her.”
He