The Law of Love

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Usually Rafe sat back and closed his eyes the minute the train began to move. However, his interview with Ivo Manning had shown him his decision that celibacy was safer than having a relationship may well be impossible to maintain. Bumping into Stealthman had reminded him just how dangerous a homosexual relationship could be.

It was not until he was sitting in his motor, driving down the long, narrow road through the woods, that he began to calm down. The thirty-minute train journey and the twenty-minute drive to Devonish House from the station was a tranquil transition between the busyness of London and the quiet of home.

The road was a public thoroughfare, but it ran through the Devonish estate. Many of the properties in the village belonged to Rafe and all the surrounding land, five thousand acres in total, was his.

A flash of something white caught his eye, making Rafe look to his left. Last summer he had spotted an albino doe in the woods and wondered if she was back, but when he looked closer he realized it wasn’t a deer, but a young woman. Dressed in white lawn, Isola Hathorn stumbled out of the woods onto the road. She looked disoriented and lost, but then everyone in the village and on the estate knew that the vicar’s daughter was strange.

Rafe pulled over and leaned out of the window. “Isola!”

The name reminded him of Ivo saying “you sound the I like an I not an E.” Isola had told him in church one Sunday that the I was pronounced E and the emphasis was on the second syllable. She regularly repeated it to others whether they asked her name or not.

“Isola, are you all right? Did you fall?” There were leaves and twigs in her long dark hair, and her usually pale face was pink, like Ivo’s face had pinked up when he had struggled to find the courage to speak.

Stop thinking about him!

Isola stood in the middle of the road gazing with unfocused eyes at Rafe. There were scuffs of dirt and grass on her gown and a tear in the skirt. Something had happened to the girl.

“I’m sorry I was in your woods, Mr. Devonish,” she said.

“I don’t mind. I’ve told you that before. Let me help you. I’ll take you home.”

“To my home? I don’t want to go to your home,” she said.

“Yes, to your home. I’ll drive you to the vicarage.” Rafe leaned over to open the passenger door and as the girl got in, he noticed a streak of bright red blood on the back of her frock. Embarrassed, he looked away. She must have fainted from her lady’s time. Rafe knew little about such things, but fainting from blood loss was a reasonable explanation.

He turned the motor around and drove back to the village, making casual conversation to put the girl at ease. “What have you been doing today, Isola? Were you exploring?” But he got no reply and decided that silence was probably best.

The vicarage was a large, old house on Church Lane beside All Hallows Anglican Church. Rafe got out and knocked on the door before ushering Isola from the car. When at length the door opened, the vicar, a man as tall as Rafe but much greater in girth and still wearing his ankle length black cassock after evensong, stared down at his daughter from under heavy, gray eyebrows. As a child, Rafe had found the man terrifying and to this day avoided talking to him after the Sunday morning service.

“Good evening, Vicar. I found Isola on the road. I believe she may have fallen.” He glanced again at the back of her gown hoping she would take care of herself before her father saw the mess, though the girl appeared not the slightest bit embarrassed.

“Go to your room and get ready for supper,” the vicar said.

Isola hurried past her father without speaking and into the dim hall, not looking at Rafe or thanking him for bringing her home.

“Have a pleasant evening, Vicar.” Rafe turned to walk back to the motor, but the vicar followed him.

“Ever since her mother died, Isola has run wild,” Reverend Hathorn stated. “There’s not much a man alone can do with a girl of eighteen. My housekeeper cares for her, but she has the house to take care of, and all the laundry and cooking. She can’t shadow Isola everywhere she goes.”

“Perhaps if you got her a companion,” Rafe suggested.

“A keeper, you mean.” Rafe looked into the man’s ugly, furrowed face. Not once in all the years Reverend Hathorn had been vicar of All Hallows had Rafe seen the man smile. “She’d only run away from a nurse. Her name means island, and that is what she is. An island unto herself. Be careful what you name your children, Mr. Devonish—if you ever have any.”

Gossip about his inclinations had circulated in the village before now. At thirty-one years old, he had never been seen with a woman, but the vicar had no right rubbing his nose in it. “I’ll do that,” Rafe told him and without breaking his gaze said firmly, “Please remember to whom you owe your living, Vicar.” The living in the parish church was the gift of the land owner, and Rafe could withdraw it at any time.

With that he drove off, teeth gritted, his knuckles white on the steering wheel until Devonish House, its myriad windows gleaming in the evening sun, came into view.

The estate had been in the Devonish family for two hundred and fifty years, and on the death of his father it had all become Rafe’s. The woodland provided a variety of game, especially deer and grouse, and the farms on the property all produced a good income. Rafe had no need to work, but he had been raised with an ethic of hard work and duty to family, and he did his duty to the letter. Had it been up to him, he’d have lived in his flat in London and dined at his club each night. He would have searched for a man with whom he could live a satisfying domestic life. Instead he went home to Devonish House almost every evening, changed into a formal dinner suit even when he and his mother dined alone, and checked up regularly on the twins who enjoyed life far more than he did.

The butler greeted him at the door, and Rafe went directly to his chamber to change for dinner. Walking into the drawing room at ten past eight, he said, “Good evening, Mother.”

“You’re late, Rafe,” Cressida Devonish responded as he helped himself to a whisky and soda from the sideboard. He really should have kissed her cheek before he got his drink, and he did so now, inhaling the fragrance of the same flowery perfume she had worn since his relatively happy childhood.

After his father’s death, he’d hoped that, after a respectable period of mourning, she might marry again. Then she could live with a new husband in their own home, but she’d shown no signs of doing any such thing, remaining a martyr to her widowhood—though she was barely into her fifties and still an attractive woman.

“I found Isola Hathorn wandering on the road as I drove past the woods. She appeared to have hurt herself, so I took her home.”

“That was kind of you, though Reverend Hathorn really should do something about that girl. He allows her to run wild all over the village and the estate. She’ll come to harm one of these days. She needs to be put in a home.”

“That’s rather cruel.” He sat opposite her on the royal-blue velvet couch, his mother having taken over his father’s particular chair after his death. “Are we dining alone?”

“No. The twins are here, and the Astons are coming. They’re bringing their niece Edina Eastley who likes to be called Edie. She’s been in France at a finishing school and is back in England and staying with them.”

“Looking for a husband, no doubt.”

Setting aside her embroidery hoop, she said, “Rafe, you can’t stay a bachelor forever, and since you’ve shown no inclination toward finding yourself a wife, I feel I have no choice but to find one for you.”

To avoid her piercing gaze, he rose and began to pace the room.

“For goodness’ sake, sit down. The guests will be here in a moment.”

Only respect, and a distant sort of love for his mother, kept him civil. Always wanting to avoid conflict at home, he sat down again. “Many men don’t marry until they’re in their forties.”

“And we’re a prime example of what happens. Me a widow at the age of forty-three and you and the twins left without a father. I should never have married a man so much older than me.”

Like a lighthouse in a stormy sea, the butler entered, announcing the guests and distracting Cressida.

Half an hour later Rafe sat beside Edie Eastley, nineteen years old and a perfectly nice young woman. They talked about horses and dogs, both of which she adored, and Rafe found himself laughing at her easy charm and sharp wit. Every time he caught his mother’s eye, she smiled at him.

In the drawing room after dinner, the twins wandered over to him, Christopher his usual quiet self and Claire vivacious, always laughing. “Are wedding bells in your future at long last?” Claire asked, punching Rafe in the shoulder.

“No, they’re not, and what about the pair of you? You’re twenty years old and you’re both done with Oxford.” He looked at Christopher, fair haired and monosyllabic as always. “You need to join Garden Court and start training as a barrister.” To Claire, equally fair but opposite in personality, he said, “And you’re supposed to be husband hunting.”

“We’re going travelling, Egypt, Morocco, that sort of thing. We’ll be gone for a good year. Won’t we?” She looked at her brother, who nodded.

The twins had always been accepted as a unit, and since Claire was the dominant personality, Christopher had been absorbed into her orbit and agreed with whatever she said and did. When they had been sent away to separate boarding schools, Christopher had sobbed day and night, and Claire had run off, stowing away on a train to get home. Eventually, after much debate and wrangling on eight-year-old Claire’s part, the twins had been reunited and tutors employed.

“I’ll join the firm when we come back, won’t I, Claire?” Christopher asked.

“Yes, we both will,” she replied, gaining a broad smile from her twin.

“You can’t,” Rafe said. “You’re a woman.”

“What about Ivy Williams and Helena Normanton?” Claire took her brother’s arm and wandered off, saying over her shoulder, “Times are changing, Rafe. We’ll both join Garden Court.”

From across the drawing room, he spotted his mother homing in on him. “So what do you think of Edie? She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”

“She is pretty and she’s most pleasant.” But I can’t marry her. Times were not changing fast enough for Rafe.

“Rafe, I’ve always known that you have certain inclinations.”

Rafe looked at his feet. This was not a subject he wanted to dissect with his mother. “Really, Mother. I don’t think we should discuss this.”

But she interrupted him. “You must suppress these inclinations. The estate needs an heir, and you must provide one. If Christopher were the elder brother, there would be less pressure on you, but that is not the case. You must rise to the occasion.”

Angry at the intrusion into his private life, he said with unaccustomed crudeness, “I’m afraid that s*x with a woman is an occasion I simply cannot rise to, Mother.”

For a long and unwavering moment, his mother stared at him before turning on her heel and walking away. It took only moments for Edie to take her place. “Come and sit down, Rafe.” She took his arm and led him to a settee away from the others. “Tell me all about yourself.”

So many conversations of this sort had been had over the years with hopeful young women that he knew if he talked about his work they would soon lose interest. “My father founded Garden Court Chambers. Let me tell you its history.” Her eyes would soon glaze over, and she would find an excuse to leave.