Page 24 of A Brush With Love at Brookview Hall (Noble Hearts)
Twenty
CORNELIUS
C ornelius watched Julia’s determined dash back towards the house. She was fleeing from something, and he suspected it was not him.
A picture was forming in his head, made up of the bits and pieces of information he had gathered.
He was good at that; it was the reason he was in this far-flung arm of Cornwall, after all.
He needed to discover a few more things before the image would be complete, but he had the essence of it, the rough charcoal sketch before the careful introduction of colour and shade turned the idea into a detailed image.
It was a sad picture, made up of browns and greys, and he wished dearly to fill it with light and colour so she might live again and let her soul free.
There would be no more painting today. Carefully, with all the attention his craft demanded, Cornelius packed up his equipment, taking first his painting back to the cottage, and then the easel, the paints, and the little table.
With his work and supplies safely stowed, he turned at last to his small desk.
From a compact locked box, he withdrew a letter, the very one he had received from his old school friend two days before, that had given him such moments of distress before common sense had prevailed.
With a flurry of thoughts whirling through his mind, he settled into the chair by the window and read those words once again.
Conn, my old friend,
What an agreeable surprise to see your name again after all this time. We had thought you quite lost to these circles, what with your inclination to dabble with your pencil and brushes, but you have not been forgotten, and are even remembered with pleasure.
Now that I know your direction, I must apprise you of all the goings-on here, but I believe that your interest in the matter of a certain lady must take precedence.
It is not a pleasant story, and I do hope you have not fallen for her wiles.
If so, be on guard and protect your heart; of your virtue, we shall say little.
I will confess, at first, to having no notion of whom you spoke, since the lady is now using a name other than that under which she was born.
But secrets are few and far between in this set, and her uncle—her mother’s brother that is, whose name she now uses—is well enough known and it was no challenge to make the connection.
Miss Lyddon, as I shall name her, is the daughter of Caroline Lyddon and James Slaight, the late Baron Slaight.
She is the only living child of that union, with no cousins of the first degree.
The present Baron Slaight is her second cousin, and he inherited the barony when Miss Julia was sixteen, and not yet out in society.
As I hear things—and, my dear old friend, we know that such is the veracity of London’s rumour mill that we cannot possibly doubt a word—the present baron accepted the title and wealth with all due gratitude, as well as the guardianship of his cousin.
She was, by all accounts, a very pretty and spirited young lady, full of curiosity and wonder at the world.
That this is recounted by almost everybody who knew her suggests it is a remarkable part of her character.
As a rule, the ton confines its remarks to the fashionable cut of her garments and the likelihood of making a good match.
Allow me to progress. Slaight seemed content enough to keep his cousin and see to her requirements, to the extent of planning a season for her after her year of mourning for her father. Here the tale gets a bit muddied, the details varying depending on who is asked.
By some connivance, she caught the eye of one of Slaight’s friends—let us call him John, since that is his name.
Whether he was taken by her, or she set her sights on him is a matter of much maliciously gleeful discussion.
No matter. The rumours continue that an engagement was entered into and that she allowed him certain intimacies, shall we say, to the point where they were caught at it during some grand event at which all of society was in attendance.
If that was not scandal enough, she then announced to all and sundry that she had decided against marrying the man!
You can imagine the disgrace. She was sent from her cousin’s house that very night, and nobody knew what had become of her.
I believe she was, by now, seventeen; this must have been six or so years ago.
Her uncle—Lyddon—had doted on the girl as a child, and possibly in memory of his sister (Julia’s mother), he did what he could to give her some respectable future.
I believe he wrote her reference and allowed her to use her mother’s name to seek employment.
It was honourably done of him, but he clearly felt her beneath any further attempts to bring back into society.
I must conclude, then, that the stories have something of the truth to them.
If this is all true, Miss Julia is a wicked woman and will do no man’s character any good to be associated with her.
I hope that satisfies your curiosity.
Now, on to more interesting matters, you must recall my cousin…
Was this the true account of Julia Lyddon?
It would certainly explain a great many things.
This was why she never spoke of her past, why she insisted on such proper behaviour and such firm obeyance of the rules.
She must be quiet and efficient, she must raise no concerns, give her employer no reason to doubt her.
Here, out on the rough coast of Cornwall, closer to Land’s End than anywhere much of Society deemed ‘civilised,’ suitable governesses must be few and far between.
If Mr Derriscott spent as little time in London as things appeared, he would not have heard the vile rumours as they spread, and Mrs Derriscott, for all her own preference for Town, must have been here at Brookview Hall with an infant Charlie when all this transpired, and by the time she left her young family for another prolonged visit to friends in more fashionable places, another scandal would have overshadowed that concerning Julia.
Armed with a reference from a respected gentleman of society and with few rivals, Julia had managed to procure employment at Brookview Hall.
But women’s reputations were fragile as glass, and not so easily replaced, and if word of her sordid history reached Mr Derriscott’s ears, Julia could find herself without a home or income in moments.
And everybody knew what became of ladies with no position, no family, no fortune, no other choices. That was a fate to be avoided at almost any cost.
Cornelius shivered, a rush of horror running up his spine. No wonder she never spoke of her past. No one could know.
But, as wicked as the sordid tale was, it did not ring true.
Julia might have doused her light and buried her vivacity beneath the dour cloak of a stern governess, but that only dimmed her character; it did not change it.
There was nothing of the coquette about her.
She was no flirt, and certainly no loose creature of dubious morals, who would discard her reputation and her virtue with such disregard for the consequences.
This he would be quite prepared to attest to before others.
More private, but more convincing to him, was the obvious fact that Julia had never really been kissed before.
His display earlier might have been a bit cruel, pushing her when she was ill-prepared, but he did ask, and he was not lying when he told her she was beautiful and that he cared for her.
But it was also a test, of sorts, not of her character but for his own knowledge.
A woman who, according to the loose tongues of Society, had been carrying on an intimate relationship with a man for some time would surely have more experience with the art than Julia had shown when he kissed her.
A wanton woman of loose virtue would, presumably, thrill to a man’s touch and not stiffen like a terrified animal before scurrying away. She would know how to mould her lips to his, how to entice him, how to respond.
Nothing in that brief embrace had demonstrated any of this.
If he had to lay money on the matter, Cornelius would swear that she had never received a proper kiss in her life.
And this raised another question. What kernels of truth were hidden in that sad tale of a fallen debutante? And who was the man who had taken this beautiful butterfly of a woman and had torn off her wings?
One day, he would discover the true story.
Hopefully, that one day would be soon.
Then he would do what he could to rectify things as much as he could, and return to plead his case with her. Because more and more, he was certain that a future without Julia would not be worth living.