Stockwin Julian - Pasha

“Master Nicholas! We thought …”

“Take me to my father,” Renzi snapped, and seeing him hesitate, added, “This instant, whatever his instructions to the contrary.”

“Lord Farndon is … not available, sir,” the man said awkwardly. “The countess will be at home, I believe.”

“Very well.” If his father was posturing he would send a message in and leave without seeing him.

He followed the man through the tall oak doors into the entrance hall. “I will inform her ladyship of your arrival, sir.”

Keyed up for a confrontation that had festered over the years, Renzi was taken aback by what he saw before him.

His mother stood in the far doorway. Her eyes glittered with tears as recognition came. Then, impulsively, she ran towards him.

She was wearing a black veil and shawl.

Clinging to him, she shook with paroxysms of sobs while he held her. Eventually she drew away, dabbing her eyes.

What did the black veil mean?

“Father?” Renzi asked quietly.

She nodded, looking into his face. “Two months hence. Of an apoplexy.”

“Mother, I’m so grieved for you.” The words came automatically as he tried to grapple with the fact that his demon father was no longer in existence.

“Nicholas. We must talk. Please!”

He crushed his raging thoughts and tried to focus.

If she was going to try to mediate between himself and his brother Henry, now master of Eskdale, in order to beg an allowance and quarters that would see him take up residence here with her, she was sadly mistaken.

“Very well, Mother.” He would hear her out.

They went to the blue drawing room. The footman closed the doors quietly and left.

“Please sit, Nicholas,” she said, with a brave smile, patting a place next to her on the chaise-longue. “We’ve tried to get word to you, but they had no idea where …”

“We were occupied in South America, Mother,” he said quietly. “And then the Caribbean.”

“You never received the letter,” she said.

“If I had to learn of it,” he murmured, “I’d rather it were from my own dear mother.”

She squeezed him tightly for a long time, then held him at arm’s length. “You’re not eating well, Nicholas. You should take more care of yourself!”

“Mama, I came here to see Father to-”

“He is no more, my dear. This is a new beginning.”

“It was to-”

“Nicholas. If you came here to contest your rightful inheritance, then rest easy. It is secured for you. I allowed him to be gulled of a hundred guineas by a scheming lawyer to produce a worthless bill of disinheriting. It seemed to answer.”

“Then …”

“Yes, my dear. I can tell you that the vile paper was quickly determined invalid and that you are now indisputably the Earl of Farndon and master of Eskdale Hall both. No one in the land may disinherit a noble lord.”

He went pale. All those years, those times of moral questioning, the vows of distancing, the bitter reflections … Where did this news leave him?

Getting to his feet he crossed to the window and looked out on the sculpted greenery, the formal gardens, the dark woods in the distance.

“My dear Nicholas, you must return home to take up your birthright. Do you understand me?”

He said nothing, the thoughts like a torrent too great to stop.

She got up and went to him, stroking his hair, as if he were still a child. “My dear boy, you’ve had such adventures on the sea as would put even Tobias Smollett to the blush. Isn’t it time to set it behind you at last?”

He couldn’t find the words in him to answer: the poverty but freedom, the scent of danger but the deepest satisfaction of true friendship won in hardship and peril. Could he ever … ?

“Should you decline,” she continued in a pleading tone, “it will undoubtedly provoke a scandal that will have the newspapers of all England in a frenzy. Do pity us, Nicholas. To be the subject of every careless wagging tongue, on penny broadsheets, in theatre dramas, it’s really not to be borne. And the estate. Without a sitting lord there will be none to sign the rolls, to-”

“Yes, Mama, I do understand. Pray grant me a space to consider it.”

Renzi felt confined, unable to think, to reason. It was stifling him-the past was bearing down on him, distorting his vision, his perceptions.

He threw open the French windows. “I-I need to be by myself,” he said hoarsely, and thrust out into the fresh air.

A gardener with a wheelbarrow stopped to gape at him but he was past appearances. He threw one glance back-his mother’s face was at the window, white and strained.

Determined, he stepped out strongly, passing beyond the tall, immaculate hedge and into the grounds. As far as the eye could see in every direction, this was the Farndon estate.

Tenants and farmers, gamekeepers and ostlers. The ancient village beyond the gates. In a timeless mutual reliance based on two things above all others-trust and stability.

It was their ancient feudal right, and in their conceiving he was the earl, the fount of all grace and bounty.

He had grown used to the freedoms he had enjoyed in the open fellowship of the sea, his snug place aboard Kydd’s ship wherever it had taken them both, on deeds of daring or desperation, to adventures inconceivable, of far places in the world where none might visit save they were borne there in a man-of-war.

Could he give this up for ever?

He had at last secured an income by his own endeavours and could deploy it in any way he chose. His studies of an ethnical nature could now proceed …

He strode to a field that had a single gnarled oak at its centre. Here he had faced his father in that fateful confrontation that had led to the break. A clash of wills that he had resolved by galloping away, leaving his enraged father to take his revenge.

It had failed. And with it the power to hurt him.

In that moment something passed on: he saw his father more to be pitied than hated, as the memory of what he had done began to fade. There was now nothing that he had to react against, to withstand … to justify his exile.

In that realisation his emotions ebbed. They were replaced by calm.

And he began to reason. If this was his present situation other moral imperatives must come to the fore. He knew he had a clear duty: to his family first and to society second. To turn on them both for selfish motives was not an act he could easily live with.

Therefore, whether he desired it or no, it had to be accepted that, with his inheritance secure, there was no conceivable reason to decline the honour.

And so, irrespective of every other consideration, the decision was out of his hands.

Turning slowly on his heel, he paced back, letting the logic work its healing on his soul.

A light-headed relief suffused him. It was all settled: there could be no more disputing with his conscience or any more vain reasonings.

He would do his duty.

His mother stood alone, tense and watchful.

He smiled softly at her. “You are right as always, Mother dear. Perhaps it is time. I will return and do my duty.”

She stared at him, then dissolved into tears, hugging him to her until they eased. Then she gently disengaged herself and returned to the chaise-longue, her eyes never leaving him.

“There’s much to do, my son. But first we will have a welcome banquet for my dear Nicholas, returned to his place of honour in the bosom of his family.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“Henry will be much put out, for his father promised him Eskdale, but take no heed-he’s impetuous and yet to be fully acquainted with the world.”

“I will not take offence, Mama.”

“And then we will throw a ball for all the world to take sight of the new earl. A grand affair-I shall invite noble families from up and down the kingdom. You’ll go to London for the season, of course, and there-”