Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123) Page 30

  Yes, Mary Rose thought as she dressed for dinner, her new family were very nice people, delightful really, and they seemed to like her very much—the Scottish bastard who was now, magically, an English vicar’s wife. She’d even brought her husband a hundred-pound dowry.

  She managed to find beds for all their guests. The three boy cousins would sleep with Max and Leo, and she imagined that they would be awake most of the night. Grayson, Sophie and Ryder’s son, was a mesmerizing storyteller, despite his meager eight years, or maybe because of them. In the dark of the night, Ryder had told her at Chadwyck House, his boy could make his listeners’ hair stand on end. He’d told his first ghost story at three years old, and his old nurse had run screaming from the nursery.

  She gave Meggie’s bedchamber to Douglas and Alex, and once again Meggie would sleep in their bedchamber. It was a pity. She wanted to know what was bothering Tysen.

  At dinner that evening, just the adults present, he was quiet, his expression austere, his speech, when he was required to say something, really quite cool, detached. He simply sat there at the head of the table, eating little, just listening to his family toss jests and insults to and fro across the table. He was, Mary Rose thought, uninvolved, and she hated it. Had it been just the night before, he would have been laughing as much as they were now. Dear God, she missed his humor, his lightness of touch, his kindness.

  What had happened?

  What was wrong?

  When at last the house was quiet and Meggie was asleep on her cot against the wall on the far side of the bedchamber, Mary Rose came up on her elbow, bent over her husband and kissed him.

  What he did was the last thing she expected.

  He didn’t move. His mouth stilled beneath hers, and he said, “Don’t.”

  She whispered, “But I love to kiss you, Tysen. It’s been far too long. I won’t wake Meggie. Just another kiss.” He was wearing a nightshirt because Meggie was in the room, and Mary Rose hated it. Her hand strayed to his belly. She loved to touch him, feel his entire body tense, feel the power of him.

  He grabbed her hand and lifted it off him. “Go to sleep, Mary Rose.”

  Slowly, she pulled back. She couldn’t see his expression, just the shadow of his face in the dark of night. “Do you feel all right, Tysen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have I done something to upset you?”

  “No.”

  “Something has happened. Won’t you talk to me?”

  “There is nothing to say. Go to sleep.”

  She lay on her back, gazing up at the darkened ceiling, wondering what was wrong, wondering why he wouldn’t talk to her.

  The following day was Sunday. All the Sherbrookes went to church. Gathering the children together was a task for Ryder, the most patient of all the adults in the house. As they walked from the vicarage to the church, the bells were ringing, the air was clear and sweet with the smells of late fall, and the gray clouds and rain wafted away early that morning. They filed into the pews, an adult assigned to every two children.

  Tysen hadn’t come into the church with them. He’d told her that he and Samuel Pritchert would go in through the vestry.

  The organ, Mary Rose thought, was just a bit out of tune, but it was played very well by old Mrs. Caddy, whose fingers were gnarled and bent with arthritis.

  It was the first time Mary Rose had seen her husband as a vicar. He came in quietly, wearing his black robe, his linen very white, standing back while Samuel Pritchert gave out all the announcements, led the congregation in the singing, and offered a single prayer for God’s grace, a rather long prayer that had the children twitching.

  Then Tysen walked forward to stand tall behind his beautifully carved walnut pulpit. When he spoke, his voice was deep and resonant, reaching every ear in the large church. His Sherbrooke blue eyes were clear, radiant in the gentle morning light that streamed through the stained-glass windows into the church. She found herself mesmerized, looking at him, thinking no angel could be more beautiful than he.

  But when he spoke, his eyes were intense, his expression bleak. He became an avenging angel, here to warn the people of the consequences of their sins. He spoke at length of one’s duties to God, of not allowing worldly considerations to pull one away from one’s focus on God and his commandments. He spoke of God’s expectations of those who believed in him and devoted their lives to him and his teachings.

  He spoke eloquently, intelligently, his words severe, stark, and, in truth, Mary Rose thought, many of his thoughts so intricate and complex that they seemed to her to be fitted more to a roomful of clergymen than to a church filled with laypeople here to worship.

  She became very still as she listened to her husband speak to the nearly two hundred people packed into the church. There was not a hint of levity or laughter in his voice, no message of redemption or joy in any of his words, no assurances of God’s boundless love and compassion, no encouragement to marvel at the daily endless beauty of God’s bounty.

  He was intelligent, she thought, so very austere and clever in his harshness. And he was very cold. Mary Rose realized that his brothers and their wives saw nothing amiss with what he was saying or how he spoke. That was what they were used to? No, that didn’t seem right. Her husband, the man who had enveloped her in his caring, his kindness, his immense ability to make her feel very good about herself, he wasn’t to be found in this vicar. This was a very different man, a man she didn’t know. How could it be? She realized suddenly, in a flash of insight, that his siblings looked disappointed. Was that possible?

  She didn’t like that distant, harsh sermon or this stranger who spoke with such cold passion about God’s endless demands, His countless tasks for man to perform to earn His approval. This stranger was pious and hard and demanding on God’s behalf; he was ready to smite both the sins and the sinners into eternity.

  Thankfully, the service finally ended. Mary Rose sat there, stunned. Mrs. Caddy began playing a loud, energetic recessional, and Mary Rose stood with everyone else.

  Tysen, Samuel behind him, walked down the center aisle, past his family, not looking at them, or at her, not pausing to speak to them, or to her. He stationed himself just outside the great church doors, in the light of the early-afternoon sun, not smiling, seriously greeting each of his parishioners, shaking hands, bowing over others, speaking quietly, not even one stingy smile ever showing on his mouth.

  When Mary Rose paused in front of him, he gave her only a curt nod, as he did his brothers and their wives. As he did his own children and nephews.

  No one said a word to Mary Rose. Max, Leo, and Meggie stayed close to her, but they didn’t speak to her. They were talking low among themselves. She knew they could see that she was completely smashed down. She also knew they realized if they did try to comfort her, she would burst into tears. She couldn’t begin to imagine how Max and Leo would react to that.

  28

  TYSEN CAME THROUGH the narrow garden gate. He stood at the back of the garden, his palms pressed against the pale peach stone wall, the ivy touching his fingers. He pressed his forehead against the wall. The sun had disappeared behind wintry gray clouds. It was chilly, but still not all that cold. Nevertheless, he felt numb to his bones. He closed his eyes and wondered what he was going to do. He could, quite honestly, think of no more prayers, no more pleas to God to show him his duty, to give him guidance, to help him see what His plan was for this one simple man. Perhaps it was because he already had God’s plan, that he’d performed exactly as God wished him to as his chosen emissary. But it was cheerless, that plan. He felt deadened all the way to his soul, and surely that was blasphemy.

  He had prayed himself out. Now he felt utterly alone, and he knew in that moment that he’d always been alone, until Mary Rose. Dear God, he couldn’t bear himself. He hated the pain that was crouched inside him now, bur-rowed in so deep he doubted he would ever be free of it.

  Douglas said, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Tys
en?”

  Wearily, he turned to face his brothers. Both Douglas and Ryder were standing not six feet away, their posture aggressive, their faces hard.

  “Yes, that was some performance,” Ryder said after the silence had continued for too long. He looked at Tysen, his confusion and frustration plain. “You gave a ringing sermon about sin and the dreadful consequences of sinning and wickedness and man’s duties and obligations to God. Endless and unforgiving, all those duties. Then you offered up a thundering prayer in that god-awful cold voice of yours, exhorting everyone to forget everything but their obligations to God. All else, you said, was sacrilege.

  “Then, you damnable ass, you leave your wife, ignore both her and your children and the rest of your family, to go off by yourself to greet your parishioners. What the devil does God say about your duty to your wife? What the hell is wrong with you? What were you thinking, you damned prig?”

  More unblinking silence.

  Douglas said as he took a step toward his brother, “Alex said that Mary Rose was stunned, that she was very hurt by your actions. For God’s sake, I myself saw what you did, saw her shock, her utter surprise. I saw how all your parishioners looked pleased when you did that, nodding their bloody heads because their vicar of old was back, the man who had no humor, but nonetheless, they knew him, didn’t want him to change.

  “And your children—no, that can wait. Tysen, I’ve a good mind to knock you down and smash your bloody face into the dirt.”

  Ryder said, stepping forward to stand again by his brother, “You marry her and now you treat her like she’s some sort of unwanted stray who happened to wander into your house. An unwanted, foreign stray. You ignore her. You simply cut her in front of all your parishioners. You’re acting like a bloody ass.”

  “I know,” Tysen said, and he said nothing more because, simply, there was nothing more to say.

  “What the hell do you mean by those idiotic words?” Douglas said, and now his hands were fists.

  “I mean only that I know how I’m acting. I am at last acting the way I am supposed to act. The past three months have been an aberration, a mistake. I am back to being myself now. All is as it should be.”

  “An aberration? A bloody mistake?” Douglas said, a thick black eyebrow slanted upward. “Aberration? Damn you, what sort of bloodless word is that? Tysen, Mary Rose is your wife. We have observed how much she adores you, seen the smile light up her eyes when you come into a room. We have seen how you idolize her, how you laugh when you’re with her, how you play with your children now, how you have finally found joy.”

  Ryder said, “We’ve seen how much you laugh now, how you hug your children for no good reason at all, how you simply play. Play? Neither Douglas nor I had seen you play since you turned eighteen and decided to become a complete and utterly pious prig.”

  Douglas said, “Oh, yes, Max sidled up to me when we arrived back here at the vicarage a while ago, and said, his head bowed, his voice all sad and hopeless, that something must have happened, that you were his old papa again. I thought he would start crying. Damn you, Tysen, what the hell is going on with you? Even that first short letter you wrote to Ryder and me was filled with humor and excitement. It was filled with your love for a woman. And then you brought your family to see us. We realized that you finally saw the beauty, not only in life but in the open love for your wife and your children. You finally realized the importance of them to you, and you gloried in it. All of us marveled. We were excited, so pleased that you had finally met a woman who could give you joy, show you her deep love, a woman who could teach you to smile and maybe even kick up your heels.”

  Ryder said, “Now it’s all sucked out of you again. I should have realized it when we first got here yesterday, but neither of us did. We just thought you were preoccupied by a church matter, or perhaps you were even worried about Mary Rose dealing with all of us.

  “But it wasn’t that, was it? Something had already happened to blight you again. What the hell was it?”

  Tysen looked blindly at his brothers.

  “I don’t want you to be the old you,” Ryder said, more gently now, seeing the ravages of pain in his brother’s eyes. “I want to see the new you, the new you I met at Chadwyck House, the man I had never before realized I loved quite so much—the father who shows his love to his children, who shares his contentment and happiness with them, who teases them and shouts with laughter when Leo tries a new acrobatic move and falls flat on his face or when Max spouts some new Latin, especially a curse word.”

  They were his own personal Greek chorus, Tysen thought, taking turns, getting it all out.

  It was Douglas’s turn, and he said now, “And what about Meggie? She worships you, her little face lights up from within when she sees you, but now the light is gone. Where the hell is that Tysen? What happened to make you bury him away again? What happened to freeze him back up?”

  “He does not belong here,” Tysen said quietly. “He is not what God wants. That man wasn’t a man of God, he was a man of the world, a man swallowed by the temp-tations of the world, content to wallow in his own indul-gences, his own wants and desires—no, not a man of God.” He pushed past his brothers and left by the garden gate, closing it quietly behind him.

  They stood there, staring after him. Douglas said slowly, “Something is very wrong here, Ryder. I’ve never seen a more miserable man. And it has come about so quickly. What the hell happened?”

  Ryder said, “Before, when Tysen acted like he did at church—all uncaring and remote and stern—you and I both knew that he truly believed that cold, distant man was who and what he saw himself to be. Nothing more, nothing less, and he was content with that man. We weren’t, but we’d finally accepted him as the humorless prig he was. Yes, that man was comfortable being who and what he was, and he was smug in his belief.”

  Douglas said something very crude and strode back to the vicarage. Ryder remained in the garden, wondering what the hell would happen now. He felt very sorry for Mary Rose and the children. For his brother he felt deep, strangling pain.

  Mary Rose sat in front of her dressing table, a small brooch that her mother had given her before she’d left Scotland held loose in her hand. Her dressing table had been moved back in here, along with her brushes, her clothes, her shoes.

  While she’d been sitting in church listening to that grim stranger speak, everything of hers that had been in Tysen’s bedchamber had been brought into Melinda Beatrice’s. Dear God, it was a dreadful room, and now Tysen had sent her here.

  It was so dreadful a room that she hadn’t even considering placing any of their guests, even the children, in here.

  It was late afternoon. Mary Rose went looking for her husband. She found him in the graveyard, sitting on a bench, his hands clasped between his knees, just staring at a very old grave. She walked up to him, and stood there, watching him, saying nothing.

  “Is there a problem?” he said finally, not looking at her.

  “Yes, I believe there is,” she said. “You have never spoken to me so coldly before, Tysen. Won’t you please tell me what is wrong? Did something happen?”

  “No, nothing happened. Please go attend to our guests. I have an appointment very shortly.” Even as he spoke, he rose. He looked at her briefly, then turned on his heel and made his way through the graves to the far cemetery gate.

  She stood there, looking after him until he was gone from her sight. She returned to the vicarage and asked Mrs. Priddie to have all her things moved from Melinda Beatrice’s bedchamber back to Tysen’s.

  Mrs. Priddie said, “I don’t know if we should do that, ma’am. The vicar didn’t say anything to me about moving you back into the big room.”

  “I am the mistress here, Mrs. Priddie. I shall do as I please. Is there anything else you would like to say?”

  “Would you like any of your guests moved in here? All the boys are crammed into one room.”

  “Oh, no, it would give them nightmares, particu
larly the children. Can you imagine the tales Grayson could make up with this room as his ambiance? No, we will just close the room up again. Now, excuse me, Mrs. Priddie. I must find my husband.”

  But she didn’t find him. He was doing a fine job of avoiding her.

  He didn’t return to the vicarage until very late that night. When he came into his bedchamber, he cradled the single candle. He didn’t want to disturb Meggie. But Meggie wasn’t there. Mary Rose was, and she was sleeping right in the middle of his bed.

  He made no noise, he was sure of it, but she sat up in bed, looking toward him. “Hello, Tysen.”

  “Mary Rose. What are you doing here?”

  “We are husband and wife. This is also my bedchamber. I will not be sent like an outcast to Melinda Beatrice’s room.”

  “Nonetheless, I would prefer it if you slept in the other room.”

  “No, I won’t be banished to that dreadful room. If you cannot bear to have me near you, then you will just have to move in there yourself.”

  Tysen set the candle down on the bedside table. He began automatically to take off his clothes, realized what he was doing, and stopped cold. He stood there, his hands at his sides, looking blankly at the bed that had his wife sitting in the middle of it.

  “It is enough, Tysen,” Mary Rose said. She hugged her knees to her chest. “I’m glad you came back. No, I won’t ask you where you have been hiding. I was praying you would come back, and finally you have. Your brothers tried very hard to make things appear normal, but of course, nothing was normal. Even the children were quiet. They don’t know what’s happening, but they know something is very wrong.”

  “Nothing is wrong,” Tysen said. “Everything is as it should be again.”