keepsakes

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Spotlight on “Charred Hope” in Love’s Perilous Road

 

Charred Hope, by Caroline Warfield

Major Titus Brannock believes the charred painting that he had tossed into his trunk might be valuable to its owner. With the wars over, he lives with his brother, the earl, and has little direction in his life. He decides to track the woman down and return her miniature.

Tessa Fleming’s late husband lost interest in her soon after the first fires of marriage faded. She followed the army across Spain anyway. Now she lives in a small cottage and supports her son with a widow’s pension. She is determined not to trust another man, certainly not a stranger that knocks on her door.

Will a stranger’s kindness rekindle hope? Perhaps Titus has found his lost purpose in the bargain.

The Hero

Titus Flavius Brannock is the younger son an earl. Like many younger sons, he took a military career, and much prefers Major Brannock as a form of address over “The Honorable Titus Brannock,” the former being rightly earned. With the wars over, he haunts the family home at loose ends and without purpose. He decides impulsively to seek out a war widow he barely remembers and return a damaged miniature that came into his possession during the war.

The Heroine

Tessa Reynolds Fleming grew up in a cold manor in Lincolnshire with stern parents and little joy. Her father, Baron Wolfecliff, disowned her when she ran off to marry a junior officer with nothing to his name. When her husband died, the old man informed her she wasn’t welcome home and could expect nothing. Left with only her widow’s pension, she manages somehow for herself and her son in a small cottage in the South Downs.

An Excerpt from Charred Hope

He knocked again. She ignored him again. The third knock was louder.

When she didn’t respond, a deep voice rumbled through the door, “Mrs. Fleming, I don’t know if you are in there or not, but I mean you no harm.”

So you say… “What do you want?” she demanded through the door.

“I— That is, I knew Lieutenant Fleming in Spain. I brought you something.”

After a moment she lifted the bar, unable to imagine who it could be. She’d heard from none of Rob’s colleagues in the years since she came here.

“Who are you?” she asked through a narrow crack.

“Titus Brannock,” he replied.

The name meant nothing to her, but something in the gentle voice that vibrated through her reassured her. She opened the door a bit wider. “I don’t know you. Again, what do you want?”

The tall stranger, hat in hand, gazed down at her with eyes the rusty brown color of oak leaves in winter. A shaft of sunlight splashed his brown hair with chestnut highlights. She held her breath.

“It is something of yours that came into my possession when you shipped home. It may be a trifle, but I think you might want it.” His voice wrapped around her like a warm quilt, a treasure she hadn’t had since her grandmother’s passing.

Don’t be a ninny Tessa, you know better than to go soft over a man. She held her ground.

“I’ve come a long way to bring it, and I have a long way home,” he went on. She thought he sounded hopeful.

She opened the door to face him, but if he thought she would invite him in, he was mistaken. She stepped out and pulled the door behind her. “I’m not in the habit of entertaining strangers, but you may leave this ‘trifle’ with me and be on your way,” she said.

He studied her long and hard as if she were a mystery to solve. It took strength but she met that piercing gaze. She peered back up at him experiencing a flicker of recognition, one that wouldn’t come into focus.

This one is a soldier for certain. It is in his bearing. In his confident determination. He wasn’t dressed like one; he wasn’t dressed like a poor man either.

At last, he nodded and tapped his hat back on his head. He reached into his fashionably tailored coat and pulled out an object wrapped in dark cloth and held it out to her.

When she took it, their hands touched briefly, and a jolt of feeling went up her arm to lodge somewhere in her center. She yanked her hand away.

At her gesture his lips quirked and he touched his hat. “I’ll leave you in peace. If you have questions for me, I’ll be at the inn in Normanton the rest of today. I’m leaving tomorrow.” He turned and left her murmuring belated thanks.

Tessa took the object to her kitchen table and unwrapped it. What she saw made her throat thicken. Tears, unanticipated and unwelcome, overtook her.

The miniature. The one I had made for Rob. The one he tossed aside so carelessly. As he did me.

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Tea with a love letter

The Duchess of Haverford took tea in her rooms this quiet Monday afternoon. She was alone for once; even the maid who brought the tray sent off back to the servants’ hall. Her life was such a bustle, and for the most part, that was how she liked it, but just for once, it was nice to have an afternoon to herself. No meetings. No entertainments to attend or offer. Not even any family members–her current companion had gone to visit her mother for her afternoon off, Aldridge was about his own business, Frances was at lessons, and Jessica and Matilda had been invited on an outing with Felicity Belvoir.

As to Haverford, who knew where he was? But he would not disturb her here. He had not come to her rooms since Jonathan had brought Frances to join her nursery–the little girl a greater gift than her son could ever know. The scandal of the child’s existence was a secret Haverford needed to keep from his royal cousins, and she had been able to use her knowledge of that secret to secure her wards’ future under Haverford’s reluctant and anonymous protection, and her own freedom from his intimate attentions.

It had been an unpleasant negotiation, determined on her part and rancorous on his–not that he much wanted his aging wife, but he resented having his will forced. In return for his agreement, she had promised to continue as his political hostess, and to maintain the myth of a perfect Society marriage.

Why was she spoiling a perfectly good afternoon thinking about His Grace? She came up here to explore quite different memories.

Putting down her tea, she fetched the little box of keepsakes from the back of a cupboard. The fan her long dead brother had given her before her first ball. A small bundle of musical scores, that recalled pleasant evenings in her all too brief Season. Aldridge’s cloth rabbit. She had retrieved it when Haverford had ordered it destroyed, saying his son was a future duke and should not be coddled. Aldridge had been eight months’ old. A pair of Jonathan’s bootees. She had knitted them with her own hands, and there had been a cap to match. A rose, faded and dry, that she had pulled from a bouquet James had sent her, to wear in her hair. It still bore a faint scent of the perfume he had delighted in as they danced that night.

And the letter. It was one of several she had kept; most of them brief notes about nothing in particular. ‘I saw these and thought of you’, on a card with a bouquet of sweet spring flowers. ‘Save me a dance at the Mitford’s tonight?’ ‘I saw you in the Park. You rode like a goddess.’ They did not have to be signed. They were all from James, and short because they had to be passed to her in secret. “I’m not throwing you away on a third son, Eleanor Creydon. Winderfield is a fribble; a useless pup. Haverford wants you, and I’ve accepted him.”

James was back in England, a widower, father of six sons, heir to a dying duke. “Take that, Father,” Eleanor thought. “The third son will be duke, and his sons after him.”

He had attended the ball she was at the night before last. Eleanor had looked up when the room fell silent, and there he stood on the stairs, surrounded by members of his family, whom she barely noticed. James looked wonderful. More than thirty years had passed, and no person on earth would call him a fribble or useless now. He had been a king somewhere in Central Asia, and wore his authority like an invisible garment. And he was still as handsome as he had been in his twenties.

She caught herself sighing over the man like a silly gosling. She was a married woman, and he was a virtuous man who had, by all accounts, deeply loved his wife. Besides, women did not age as well as men, as the whole world knew. She no longer had the slender waist of a maiden, her hair was beginning to grey, and her face showed the lines her mother swore she would avoid if she never smiled, laughed, frowned, or showed any other emotion. Of course, she had not followed her mother’s instruction, but those who had were no less lined than Eleanor, as far as she could see.

Gads! She was prevaricating. She had come here to reread James’s last letter; the one that had broken her heart; the one she had ignored, leaving her to a lifetime of regret.

Stealing herself, she opened it.

My dearest, dearest love

My father is in it, too. He says that Haverford is to have you, as soon as he has recovered from his wounds.

I wish I had never challenged the duke, or that I had shot to kill. I meant only to defend your honour; to show he could not speak of you as if you were his possession. Even a husband should hesitate to show such disrepect to the woman he has promised to cherish above all others, and so I told him. ‘You are not even her betrothed,’ I told him, ‘and the last man on earth to deserve her’. I am very sorry, Eleanor. I lost my temper, when I should have been thinking of the best way to press my case with your father.

Now, the devil is in it, my father insists that I must flee the country. He says Haverford will have me arrested for shooting him, and Father won’t lift a finger to stop him.

Come with me, Eleanor. I promise I can look after you. The ship my father has organised leaves in two days, but I have a friend who can get me away tomorrow night. I promise I can look after you. I’ve sold the little estate my mother left me, so I have funds. We will go to the Continent. I can find work, I know I can, and we will be together. I know it won’t be what you are used to or what you deserve, but I love you, and you love me. Is that not worth fleeing for?

Meet me by the oak near the back gate of your garden as soon as the house is quiet tomorrow evening. I will be there from 8 of the evening and will wait until 2 hours after midnight. We have to be on the ship in time to sail with the dawn, and by the time your household wakes, we shall be gone down the river, and out to sea.

Come with me, my love.

Yours forever

James