Tempted

He pondered this as he tried one pool after another. He supposed a stream would change a good deal in ten years, but why had everything else changed so much? Indeed, some of his memories were truly faulty. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps he had remembered wrong or the memories had become distorted with time. He also remembered things that were not there, trees and pieces of furniture. He supposed he could have invented these, but why would he, since he tried never to think of home? He had, he realized, spent a lot of effort wiping out all thoughts of the place.

He had only just baited his hook atop a big rock by one of these pools when a shot whistled past his head. He rolled off the rock backward, landing in the shallows and staring through his wet hair at a figure in white. Much as he wanted to right himself, his every instinct was to lie still on his back and hold his breath. After regarding him for a moment, the woman moved off into the woods, a dark object showing up against the white of her dress—a pistol.

Evan breathed and rolled over, watching as a drop of blood splashed onto the wet stones and washed away. He felt his head and located the cut near his hairline. He was about to bind that up when he discovered, to his dismay, that the fishhook had gotten lodged in the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He really felt like weeping, but instead he laughed. It was the sort of thing that had got him his half-mad reputation in Spain. He could laugh in the face of the worst disaster because he could not do anything else.

He collected his gear and stumbled toward the house. Ralph gave him a start when he appeared out of the small woods in his shirtsleeves. He waved a dark object at Evan, who almost crouched to duck until he realized it was only a book. He waved back, paused and racked his brain to try to remember if the figure in white could have been a man with his shirttail hanging out because of the heat. No, he could not be sure. With the blood and water in his eyes he could not even say for sure if the figure had been wearing white. It might as easily have been cream, buff or light gray.

“What happened to you?” Judith asked, making him flinch again and driving his heart against his ribs. “You’re soaked, and why do you look at me so oddly?”

Evan had by now ascertained that the dark object Judith held by her faded muslin dress was also a book and not a pistol. Why had such a thought even come into his head, and did everyone have to be walking about with books like this? His nerves had not been so badly knocked about when he had been in Spain.

“Fishing,” he gasped with relief.

“It looks like the fish won. You’ve got a hook in your palm.”

“I know.”

She took his hand and turned it over to examine the position of the hook. “It would probably be less painful to push it the rest of the way through and nip it apart rather than trying to extract it.”

“Can you do it?” he asked, fascinated by having her handle him rather than the other way round.

“I do have a brother. I can manage it if you don’t wince too much. Come to the stable. There are sure to be some cutters there.”

“What did happen to you?” she asked, to distract him as she deftly twisted the hook and exposed the barb on the other side of his hand. He did not flinch at all, just watched dispassionately.

“I fell off that big rock at the end of the path.”

“Hence the cut on your head. But why?”

“If you must know, someone took a shot at me,” he said with a reckless smile.

She looked suitably horrified. “I thought I heard shooting.” She bound up his hand, which was not bleeding at all, with her worn, lace handkerchief. It was a quite unnecessary operation, but Evan would never have said so. He did not mean to return the handkerchief, either.

“What are you two doing, or shouldn’t I ask?” Terry propped his shotgun against the wall.

“Someone fired at Evan near the stream,” Judith told him.

To Evan’s surprise, it was Terry who glanced at the shotgun, not Judith.

“It was a pistol shot,” Evan supplied. “I saw who did it, but only at a distance.”

“I heard the shot and went to investigate, but I didn’t see anyone by the time 1 got there. What did the person look like?”

“I was upside down in the creek with blood and water in my eyes. I have only the vaguest impression of someone in white.”

“And yet you made out that the shot came from a pistol?” Judith questioned.

“I could tell that from the sound as it whizzed by.”

“They don’t sound anything alike, Judith,” Terry advised. “Someone in white?”

“Is that significant?”

“No, why should it be?” Terry asked with a laugh.

Evan did not like the way Terry and Judith glanced at each other. They knew who it was and they were not going to tell him. He had never felt like one of the family, but had never felt such an outsider as at that moment.

Evan had been under fire for years, sometimes for days at a time, yet none of it had unnerved him as much as that one bullet, perhaps because it had been fired by a woman. And neither Judith nor Terry had said “he,” though the natural assumption would be that it was a man.

It had to be Lady Mountjoy. She must be unhinged to think she could get rid of him this way. He had already decided that she was unsettled by her pregnancy. And she had given him fair warning. He would just have to be careful…but for the rest of his life? He thought of carrying the tale to his father for only a moment before discarding that idea. How could he tell such a man that his wife was mad or close to it? He certainly could not tell Judith he suspected her sister, even if she suspected her as well.

By the time Evan delivered his battered body into the hands of the stunned Bose, he was in the mood to pick up and leave, and said as much.

“I knew it! I knew it couldn’t last! You’ve argued with him again, haven’t you?”

“No, as it happens. But someone shot at me near the stream. I might as well stay in the army, if—”

“Are you serious? They shot at you on purpose?”

“Yes. It wasn’t you, was it?” Evan asked playfully.

“Don’t tempt me. Did you get a look at him?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was on purpose?”

“You’re right. It was probably an accident,” he said to appease Bose. Being sniped at was such an ordinary thing to an engineer that, after the initial surprise, he was inclined to shrug it off, anyway.

Chapter Four

Ralph’s shirt points drew no more than a sniff from Lord Mountjoy at dinner. Evan had gone to the library early so that he could observe Lady Mountjoy when she came into the room, but she did not seem at all surprised to see him alive, merely offended at his stare.

Perhaps she did not even remember shooting at him, Evan decided. It was possible that once the child was born the madness would leave her—or get worse. He glanced anxiously at her and drew such a look of sheer hatred that he had no stomach for dinner.

Perhaps Judith’s reluctance to accept his attentions came from her sister’s poisonous comments about him. And why not? They were probably true, whatever she said. He was a soldier, flighty, unreliable, violent. He must have done far worse things than even Lady Mountjoy could imagine.

“Stop it!” his father said in the middle of the second course.

Evan froze, convinced his abstracted crumbling of his bread had drawn this censure. But when he looked up, it was Lady Mountjoy his father was staring at.

“Helen, I won’t have you looking daggers at the boy all through the meal.”

“Father, don’t,” Evan pleaded.

“Then I will eat in my room, sir, until you find your wife’s company more to your taste than your son’s.” She rose and left with the stateliness of a queen.

“You don’t help matters by saying nothing.” Lord Mountjoy turned on Evan this time. “Have you no conversation?”

Evan sighed. “It’s not working, Father.”

“Ralph!” Lord Mountjoy shouted, redirecting his attack. “Tell me what you have learned so far from this wastrel.”

To Evan’s surprise, Ralph threw himself valiantly into the breech and discoursed on algebra for a good three minutes with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Judith then filled the ensuing silence by leading her nephew on to speak about his poetry.

“I didn’t know you wrote it yourself,” Evan finally said in amazement, comforted by the assurance that Ralph, at least, was not his would-be assassin.

“Mere schoolboy stuff,” Ralph declared.

“It is not,” Judith vowed. “He sends me a poem in nearly every letter, and they are good.”

“Why does he never send me poems?” Angel demanded.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Ralph said. “It’s no good if you have to explain them.”

“It’s always the same. I’m too stupid or I wouldn’t understand. Nobody thinks I know anything.”

“Would you be willing to read some for us tonight?” Evan suggested. “I’m sure I won’t understand them, either, but I would like to.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Lord Mountjoy grumbled under his breath.

“Oh, but it’s not,” Evan said spontaneously. “Everything we do—the wars we fight, the work, the struggle to farm the land—everything is done to make such things as poetry and art possible.”

“Well, I know that,” Lord Mountjoy said. “I stay here and work like a laborer to keep that young lounger in school so he can write poetry.”

“I’m sure Lord Mountjoy would not want to hear my poetry,” Ralph mumbled.

“Of course I do. Haven’t I just said I do? You will read for us tonight. I should get something for my money.”

Ralph had taken the request quite seriously and scurried to his room after dinner, to meet them all in the library with a sheaf of papers. Lady Mountjoy was there and so pointedly ignored Evan that he wasn’t sure if it was better than being hated. As soon as the women had settled to their work, Lord Mountjoy looked expectantly at his stepson, and Ralph stood, with more relish for the task than Evan would have expressed under similar circumstances.

“‘The Torn Soul,’” he read.

“Another bitter morning.

The full moon sees me to my classes

With a smudge of blue across his face

As though he has been tending my fire.

I go where they send me to learn

Prudent lines of language,

The science of machines and

The vagaries of politics and wars,

When all I really want to think about is the moon.

But there is always the night.”

“Is that it, then?” Angel broke the silence to ask.

“Yes. What do you think?”

“Well, it’s bit short, isn’t it?”

“The length has nothing to do with it,” Ralph said defensively. “It’s the meaning—”

“It doesn’t rhyme,” Lord Mountjoy rumbled.

“I know it doesn’t rhyme. I do know how to make a rhyme. But there is a difference between rhymes and poetry.”

“I like it,” Evan vowed. “I’m not quite sure why I like it. Maybe because it does not rhyme. Too much of the singsong is distracting from the meaning for me. Now that I think of it, I’m quite sure that’s why poetry usually makes me nod off.”

“You mean, like when you say, ‘Nothing, Father’?” Lord Mountjoy asked.

Evan glanced at his father in amused surprise.

“The moon is always a woman,” Terry said a little blearily, but with great conviction.

“It needn’t be,” Ralph maintained.

“In every poem I have ever read, the moon is feminine.”

“He’s got you there, Ralph,” Lord Mountjoy said with satisfaction.

“Let me see,” said Judith, taking the sheet and reading it over. “You know, Ralph, I like it already, but perhaps it works even better with the moon as a woman.”

Ralph thought through the poem in his mind and finally took the paper and made a note with a stub of pencil he pulled from his pocket. “I think you’re right. It does read better.”

“Aha, so we are right,” Lord Mountjoy said.

“An intelligent man is always open to good ideas, no matter who they may come from,” Ralph said. Terry smiled crookedly, and Lord Mountjoy looked at Ralph a little suspiciously.

“Why a woman?” Angel asked. “Why would the moon always be a woman?”

“Tradition,” said Ralph. “It was the smudge of dirt that threw me. One does not think of a woman with a smudge of dirt on her face, but I suppose she might have if she were tending a fire.”

“That’s no answer,” Angel complained.

“It has to do with the changeableness of woman,” stated Lady Mountjoy. “They are well-known for their inconstancy, whereas men are so reliable,” she added without looking up from her work.

Evan chuckled in spite of himself. “Poetry and satire in the same evening,” he said. “My cup runneth over.”

Lady Mountjoy’s mouth softened, not into anything approaching a smile, but at least she did not glare at him.

“I don’t understand,” Angel protested.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Ralph declared.

“You know so much just because you have been to school. Why does it cut off like that? What do you mean by ‘There is always the night’?”

“I mean I may be at someone else’s beck and call to study and learn what they please in the daytime, but at night I can dream or write whatever I please, that they can’t kill the romance in me.”

“You see,” said Judith helpfully, “the moon is a metaphor, for dreams, romance, whatever you will.”

“A what?”

Ralph turned back to Angel. “It means it stands in place of just saying those things—”

“It would be much simpler all around if you did just say those things without all the bother. I don’t like your poem at all,” Angel said defiantly.

“Well, I do,” said Lord Mountjoy. “It tells me more about Ralph than I have found out all the times I have talked to him. Now if we could just get it to rhyme,” he mused.

“Thank you ever so much for the help. If you don’t mind, I shall go upstairs and work on it some more.” Ralph bolted from the room before he was likely to be subjected to Lord Mountjoy trying to impose a rhyming scheme on him, and Evan caught Judith grinning at the same thought.

“You were going to tell me about your canal, sir,” Evan said, to distract his father.

“My what? Oh, yes, yes, the canal. Terry, bring one of those candles over to the desk. I have my plans right here.”

As the clock chimed ten, the ladies rose and put away their work. It struck Evan that they led a very dull life here. He could not remember exactly what life had been like at Meremont before, but his Gram had always served tea in the evening, and they had had three meals a day instead of two. He knew that this present situation was not from any paucity of food, but due rather to the scarcity of help. Witness how Bose had been pressed into service in the kitchen in his spare hours. Of course, that might be voluntary, for nothing would put him closer to Joan than helping out at the house rather than lounging about the stable.

Once Evan looked at the map and realized how much land his father had bought up, he could see why they might be beggared. There had to be close to a thousand acres. That brought the size of the contiguous holdings of Meremont to nearly two thousand acres, if one counted the barrens. He stared at his father, trying to divine if the man had become unhinged. Several things suggested this: the will, for one; now this talk of the canal. Lord Mountjoy glanced up at him for approval of the route he had mapped out.

“What’s this bit of land here?” Evan asked. “You haven’t inked it in yet.”

“We haven’t got it yet. Fifteen acres of worthless riverbank. It belongs to Lady Sylvia Vane. With any luck we shall get it for free.”

“How so?”

“We shall if Terry does not drink himself to death before he has her promise of marriage.”

“I suppose I am good for something,” Terry said.

“Such a sacrifice for a bit of land,” Evan said with a smile. “Is she worth it?”

“She’s beautiful,” Terry said.

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t love anyone else. I may as well marry Sylvia.”

“I hope you show her a little more ardor than that,” his father said critically, and Terry smiled crookedly.

“I hope you have not got another aging spinster with an odd plot of land you need. I would not be willing to make such a sacrifice.”

“All that I require of you is that you build the canal. How many men will it take, do you think?”

“Hundreds, unless you want it to take years.”

“We cannot wait years. We need it done in a year.”

“Impossible!”

“Then we will merely hire more men.”

“Have you any idea what this all will cost?” “That’s the other thing I require of you. You must work out what it will cost.”

“I’ll start surveying it tomorrow,” Evan agreed wearily, hoping that he could discourage his father from the foolish scheme by laying in front of him the figures, before his brother leapt into what was bound to be a disastrous marriage.

Judith rode with Evan as usual in the morning. Angel was not yet up, so Evan made Bose go with them. They went north to scout again the area where the canal was to go, the canal from nowhere. Where on earth was he to start from? There would be water aplenty to feed the thing from all the streams that ran through the district, but the point of origin was only vaguely sketched in on the map. The gap in the hills, he supposed. There was a group of buildings there, and he asked Judith what they were.

“A factory village where they used to fire pottery. There’s still plenty of clay left, I hear, but since the owner died the place has been shut up.”

“Then how can Father think this canal will be profitable?”

“You think it’s a bad idea?”

“I think it’s a disastrous idea. I’m just putting off telling him so.”

“That will cause an explosion,” she said.

Bose looked accusingly at Evan.

“Bose, go scout about that village. You can catch up with us later.” Bose clenched his teeth and rode off. Judith followed him with her eyes but made no objection.

“When you first came here you seemed to enjoy setting your father’s teeth on edge.”

“I really didn’t do it on purpose, but he was so prepared to take umbrage it took no effort at all.”

“In fact, you fell in to the way of it quite naturally. Was that what you were like when you were young?”

“I can’t for the life of me remember if I used to bait him or not. That was all so long ago. If I was in the habit of discomfiting him on purpose, I would have thought I would have outgrown it.”

“If you had grown up here, perhaps you might have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even though Helen is a decade older than me and practically raised me, we relate as adults because I have grown into that role. Our relationship has changed because we have always been together. Your attitude toward your father has never changed, since you haven’t seen him in all this time.”

Evan reined in his horse. “You’re telling me that I’m still playing the rebellious youth to his authority figure?”

“Even though he has no authority over you at all.”

“In other words, I should grow up,” he said with a grin.

“Or at least strive to act as though you have,” she countered with a prim smile.

Evan gave a crack of laughter. “You don’t pull any punches, do you, my dear?”

“I am not your dear.”

“That is what Father calls you,” he said, kneeing Taurus into a walk. “I’m merely trying to act grown-up, like him.”

“If you want to do so by bantering at me instead of him, I am agreeable. At least it will be fair play.”

“Meaning you are more able to defend yourself. Yes, I am well aware of that.” He felt his jaw.

“Whether you seek to or not, you do hurt him, and I don’t like it. I care about him too much.”

“Why do you care about him so much?” Evan asked, reining in his horse again. Judith pulled up beside him.

“Because he is a kind and good man. That should be enough.”

Evan stared at her, but the sincere look she returned convinced him to accept her assertion at face value. “Perhaps he has mellowed.”

“Evan, he is embarking on the last great enterprise of his life. This canal project is the last thing he will have a chance to do that will make a difference in the world. I will not have you dashing those dreams. Can’t you just agree to build it?”

“I suppose I have done more for lesser reasons. Very well, mon général,” he gibed, saluting. “I will do as you say. But I am doing it for you, not for him.”

“Do it for yourself, for your sons.”

“I won’t have any sons.”

“Of course you will…eventually.”

“But not by you?”

“No,” she said with a shudder.

He studied her face. Her expression was stubborn, but in defense of his father or in a determination not to cry?

“Then I will do it for Terry’s sons.”

“Don’t lay that at my door, Evan,” she snapped. “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry. But I don’t think I want sons, anyway. Not if they have to go through what I’ve gone through. It’s just not worth it.” He urged Taurus to a canter, and Molly fortunately followed him without command, for Judith was too numb to guide her.

She could not always tell if Evan was joking. He did so often use a joke to turn aside her sympathy or concern. It was as though he could not handle someone caring about him, since he’d never been used to it. Instead of eating up attention, he shrugged it off very much like a little boy who feels he has outgrown the need for mothering. She had watched it happen with Ralph, and she was watching Thomas begin to spurn that sort of coddling. It broke her heart to steal a few moments alone with him, then have him get impatient when she only wanted to love him a little.

She supposed men eventually grew mature enough to accept affection again and return it. But Evan had never known it, except from Gram, and she was gone now.

They rode the rest of the way home in silence and stopped at the dower house out of habit, to walk the horses in the garden.

“I’m sorry if I was cruel to you. I cannot imagine what you went through in Spain. It was very bad of me to rip up at you when you have already suffered so much.”

“What gave you the idea I suffered? I had the time of my life.”

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