Part 7 (1/2)

”Did that happen often?”

”No, she always made clear to her lovers that if they wanted to be with her, they must treat me with courtesy and respect. Some of them gave me splendid gifts to curry favor with Delilah.” Athena smiled reminiscently. ”The best was a beautiful little pony when I was six. I hated saying good-bye to that pony, but we traveled a great deal and seldom stayed anywhere longer than a few months. Delilah always engaged excellent tutors wherever we were, so I learned all kinds of interesting things. How to use firearms because she said a woman must know how to defend herself. She often moved in diplomatic and government circles, so she discussed politics and statecraft with me. If we stayed on someone's estate, she would ask the land steward to explain planting and animal husbandry. It was . . . an unusual way to grow up, but wonderful and exciting.” Athena's eyes closed and her voice cracked. ”She was everything to me.”

Tired of looking up at his companion, Will rose from the bench and took a relaxed position against the stone wall opposite where Athena was standing. ”The drawback, surely, was that when you lost her, you had no one else.”

Athena opened her eyes and smiled with brittle humor. ”You are much cleverer than you look, Will.”

He thought a moment. ”Should I be insulted?”

Her tension eased into a genuine smile. ”I hope you aren't. What I meant was that you look like a solid, unimaginative officer, vastly competent but not . . . not . . .”

”Not very intelligent?” he suggested.

Athena bit her lip as if suppressing laughter. ”I would rather end my sentence by saying you don't look particularly imaginative. Or insightful. But you are both.”

”Being imaginative, I'm now wondering if one of your mother's wandering amorous adventures brought you to San Gabriel.”

”Much cleverer than you look! My mother met Prince Alfonso when he was in London and followed him back here. She was a great favorite with the whole royal family, so we were welcome to stay even when the affair burned out. We lived here long enough for me to learn the language and make friends, and visited again later. I was told to call the king and queen Uncle Carlos and Aunt Isabella. She and the king had lively discussion about how to run a small country, and she let me sit in when they did. That proved really useful when I ended up being an advisor to Sofia.”

”Which is why Prince Alfonso confuses you with Lady Delilah. Is San Gabriel as much of a home as you've ever had?”

Athena's brow furrowed. ”I suppose it is. The longest I've ever spent anywhere else was in school, and I hated the place.”

Since it didn't sound as if Delilah would have put her in a hateful school, Will asked, ”Were you sent there after your mother died?”

Athena nodded and began pacing again. ”I was fourteen. Delilah was very ill and she explained to me that she was dying, so she must put me under my father's protection. I was devastated, of course.” Her paces tightened to swift, tense steps. ”She took me to my father's family seat and marched in with me beside her. He was furious and horrified, yet I could see that he also still desired her.”

Will frowned, imagining what such a meeting must have been like for Athena. ”It doesn't sound like a scene that any fourteen-year-old should have to witness.”

Athena sighed. ”I needed to be there, if only to meet my father for the first and last time. Delilah told him that I was a good, intelligent, obedient girl who would be a credit to him.”

”Were you obedient?” Will asked with mild surprise.

She shrugged. ”When I wanted to be. Not that it mattered what she said about me. My father was revolted by my existence, but apparently the resemblance to his legitimate children was strong enough that he couldn't deny fathering me, particularly since he'd known of my existence since Delilah first found herself increasing. He snarled that I would be cared for and slammed out of the room.”

”My father was not an easy man, but he was a saint by comparison,” Will said sympathetically. ”Your father sounds appalling.”

”Based on our very brief acquaintance, that's an accurate description. But he did fulfill his word to see that I was cared for.”

”And your mother trusted him enough to know that he would. That's an interesting point.”

”Yes, it is.” Athena looked thoughtful. ”He's an English gentleman who prides himself on behaving honorably, though I doubt if you'd agree with his definition of 'honorable.' He was so rich that supporting one schoolgirl was nothing to him, but he could have sent me to a workhouse rather than fulfilling his responsibilities. So he could have been worse.”

”Yet he did send you to a school you hated.”

She grimaced. ”It was a grim girls' school in a ramshackle manor house by the Irish Sea. The icy winter drafts would blow papers off a desk. The headmistress followed that fine Christian dictum that sparing the rod would spoil the child. All the students hated the place, so I became a convenient target for malice because of being a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Too tall, too different, and far too illegitimate. I developed a truly intimidating glare when other girls went too far, and I studied a lot, which kept me busy and improved my mind.”

Will winced as he imagined years of living in such a place. ”Was your father deliberately trying to punish you for existing?”

”I don't know. Probably he didn't care where I went as long as it was out of his sight. He might have specified a very strict school to counter the wild tendencies I must have inherited from Delilah.”

Even at fourteen, she would have been independent and ingenious. Will asked, ”Did you ever try to escape from the school?”

”I thought about it.” A faint smile flickered over her lips. ”I really thought about it. But I had no place to go in England, and no money. I couldn't possibly have made it here to San Gabriel, the only place likely to welcome me. So I endured.”

”Were you ever told what your future held?”

”The solicitor who took me to the school said I would be there until I was eighteen, at which point I could leave and I would be granted a modest but adequate quarterly allowance on the condition that I never tell anyone I was related to my father's family. Delilah and I had used the name Markham, which was in her family several generations back. There was no obvious connection to my father's family, so I was able to continue using the name. Generous of him, wasn't it?”

Will suppressed a strong urge to find out who her father was so the man could be throttled. ”Your father should have been whipped!”

”Members of the House of Lords wield the whips,” she said dryly. ”They don't suffer under them. You can see why I am not fond of peers of the realm. Both my grandfathers were lords. The one on my mother's side I never met at all.”

As a member of the House of Lords himself, Will said, ”Not all lords are so dreadful. I went to school with some who are very good fellows.”

”Then I hope they treat their b.a.s.t.a.r.d descendants better than my grandfathers did. Your own brother would not have fared well if not for you. But enough of that.” Athena made a dismissive gesture. ”It's time for you to bare your soul and do some more suffering. What are the three worst things that have happened to you? The loss of your wife is surely on the list. What about the loss of your mother? Your father?”

She was right. The knife cut both ways, and it was time for him to speak of things he had long buried. ”The siege of Badajoz would make the list of most dreadful things for anyone who was there, but that's a broadly shared horror. Perhaps we need a separate category for such terrors? Having lived here for the war years, surely you have similar memories.”

She made a face. ”None so bad as Badajoz, but bad enough. Another day, perhaps. I'm more interested in what personal trials have tempered you.”

”I dislike ranking tragedies,” he said slowly. ”Losing Lily and our son was certainly the first great tragedy of my life, and the event that most changed my life, because if she hadn't died, I never would have joined the army.”

”Living in England and raising a family would have been such a very different path from the one you're on,” she mused, her gaze a.s.sessing. ”I've heard the tales of mud and slaughter and horror. The Peninsular Wars have been brutal. Do you regret walking this path?”

He'd not really thought of his life in terms of the path taken versus the one ended by tragedy. ”I do not regret the army,” he said, his brow furrowed. ”I feel as if I've contributed to a worthy goal, and I have made strong friends.h.i.+ps. But I'm ready for a change. The peacetime army would be deucedly boring.”

”Then it's good you're on your way home.” She c.o.c.ked her head to one side. ”What is another of your worst experiences?”

”When I read the news that my brother, Mac, had died in London.” Will halted, remembering the numbness that dissolved into a tidal wave of pain when he'd read the fatal words. ”I was visiting my friend Ballard in Porto on the way home to England when I saw the notice of Mac's death in a London newspaper that had just arrived.”

”I'm so sorry!” she said, her golden hazel eyes warm with compa.s.sion. Then her brow furrowed. ”From the way you spoke of him, I thought he was still alive?”

”He is. His death was misreported, and finding him alive when I returned to England was the greatest happiness of my life,” Will said simply. ”That didn't mean my grief hadn't happened, but at least it ended quickly.”

”Tragedies with happy endings are the best kind, but sadly rare.” Athena looked a little wistful before continuing. ”What else would you put on your painful experiences list? The deaths of your parents?”

He sighed. ”Neither of their deaths caused me more than a brief, dutiful twinge of regret. I didn't really miss them when they were gone because I didn't see a great deal of either. My mother was frail and my father was busy with his own interests. He had a reliable heir, but he wasn't much interested in me as an individual.”

”That is a tragedy of another sort, but I do understand. If I someday hear that my father has died, I would feel nothing because I didn't know him.” Her voice turned dry. ”At least I knew nothing good of him. It's possible his legitimate children adore him.”

”Equally possible they don't, since he sounds like an unpleasant fellow.” A thought struck Will. ”Would you like to meet other members of your parents' families? Surely, they aren't all bigots. Your half brothers and sisters must be around your age, and perhaps you have cousins on your mother's side. They might like to know you.”

”No!” Athena said sharply. ”I don't need more people who wish I had never been born.” She reached for her hat, which she'd hung on one end of the bench. ”I think we've had quite enough harrowing questioning for one day. Do you really think there is value to this mutual baring of souls?”

He studied her face, seeing a strong, capable woman who had learned to play the difficult cards life had dealt her. But in her eyes were shadows of the injured child she had been, and that vulnerability called to him powerfully. ”Yes, there is value. I feel I know you much better than I did when we stopped here to eat, and I'm glad for that. But I realize you might not feel the same.” He smiled ruefully. ”I'm rather afraid to ask.”