A Warriner To Seduce Her. Virginia Heath

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      ‘That’s where I met your father. Without waiting for the proper introductions, he pencilled his name on my dance card. He was a wonderful dancer and so handsome.’ Two of the few positive things anyone could say about him.

      Her eyes fluttered open and she noticed Jake for the first time in an hour. Her hand came up and cupped his cheek. A rare and precious moment of parental affection in a home devoid of any. ‘You’re the most like him, you know. You have his smile and his way with words.’ As his father’s words were always slurred or nonsensical from inebriation that comparison didn’t particularly please him, but Jake didn’t move or speak because at least she saw him. ‘He was a charmer, too, just like you are... I dare say you’ll grow up to be identical as well. His bad blood runs the strongest through you.’ Her hand slipped back to her side and her expression soured. Because he reminded her so much of his father she looked away in disgust. That cold, dead stare out to nothingness reserved wholly for him for disappointing her so. How he hated that look.

      ‘Go fetch him, Jake.’

      ‘Not now Mama. It’s still early.’ Two in the afternoon was practically dawn by his father’s standards. ‘Let him sleep it off a bit longer. Tell me more about your picnics in Putney.’

      ‘No, Jacob! Fetch him now.’

      He never understood how it was possible for her to simultaneously loathe and love his horrid father at the same time. How could those opposing emotions exist together? He loved his brothers, sometimes they irritated him, but Jake never hated them. Joe reckoned this was because the love between men and women was entirely different from brotherly love. If that was true, then he wanted no part in that destructive other kind of love. Jake hated arguments. And bad moods. He preferred fun and laughter to tears and tantrums.

      ‘Let’s walk in the orchard instead.’ Away from the dangerous, angry water which she seemed intent on staring at.

      ‘I don’t want to. I want my husband. Bring him to me! Tell him I will throw myself in the river if he doesn’t come!’

      And there it was, the usual threat. Mama was always threatening to end her life in whichever violent way was closest to hand to get her own way. Yesterday, she had threatened to stab her heart with her embroidery scissors, last week she was going to fling herself under a carriage. She never once tried, but his father still came running, after Jake had borne the brunt of his drunken temper at being awoken when his head still pounded. He would haul his dissolute carcass from his pit, dash to his woman and the pair of them would go at it again like vicious cats with their claws bared until they disappeared into her bedchamber.

      With the threat of the customary angry punch from his hateful father and the petulant, dramatic whining he would hear from his mother if he refused, Jake nodded. Resisting was futile. This was the way of things. His parents hated each other and were addicted to each other at the same time. The emotions so powerful they blotted out and excluded everyone and everything from the personal hell they preferred to share together.

      With heavy feet he trudged back towards the house and tried to fill his head with happy thoughts instead. Purposefully light and cheerful things which he would one day enjoy, but which did not exist in his miserable childhood. Parties, balls, dancing ladies in beautiful gowns, rowing boats and sunny picnics...

      Instead of fetching his father he sat down to daydream, waiting long enough to ensure she believed his lie that dear Papa couldn’t be woken. Another habit which earned him censure from both his parents. Sometimes that worked and she would march back to the house in a temper to give him what for. Other times, she scowled at Jake and called him useless like his father, then ordered him straight back, but at least he had delayed the inevitable.

      It was always inevitable.

      With a sigh he stood and headed back to where he’d left her. As soon as he emerged from around the trees she turned and smiled, then promptly launched herself off the bank into the swirling water.

      At first he stood frozen to the spot, but then realised the gravity of the situation. She had carried out her threat and he’d failed to fetch his father. His father might well be a roaring drunk, but he was a strong one and could save her. Now all she had was Jake, the smallest and most useless Warriner.

      He sprinted towards the river bank calling to her, dropping to his belly at the edge and stretching out his arm. ‘Mama! Grab my hand!’ But she was too far away from his childish arms to reach, clinging to overhanging branches of the bare weeping willow as the river foamed and rolled around her, coughing violently as water splattered into her lungs.

      He ran to the tree, screaming for help. ‘Jack! Jamie! Come quick!’

      His elder brothers were in the field somewhere, working because most of the labourers had left long ago. He had no idea where Joe was, but willed him here, too. Joe was cleverer than Jake and his quick brain would find the solution, although anyone else would be better than just him. In desperation, he clung to the sturdy trunk and leaned out as far as he dared, knowing that if he tumbled in then the raging river would take him and they would both be dead.

      ‘You need to grab my hand, Mama!’ Hot tears were streaming down his face. Tears of guilt and terror, of shame at not being good enough and too selfish to sacrifice himself. ‘Please!’

      Her heavy winter coat and long skirts were weighing her down like an anchor. Jake could see that as well as he could see the fear in his mother’s eyes just before her head plunged beneath the water. It bobbed up, but barely. Only her face was visible as she gulped for air, but her eyes locked with his and beneath her fear he saw the disappointment that he had failed her just as his father had so many times. In that moment, he realised she had never meant to die.

      ‘Grab my hand...please!’ Her chilled fingers were losing their grip on the slippery fronds, the fast current was greedily flowing around her, each new surge ebbing higher and higher as she struggled to stay afloat. Soon her fingers, then her face disappeared beneath the water and all Jake could see was the tangled whirl of her green skirts trailing like river weed among the branches of the willow.

      He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the dreadful sight, even for the thumping sound of racing feet behind him, watching powerless as his two eldest brothers selflessly risked their own lives to correct his mistake. Joe arrived soon after and was stood frozen behind, his face white and terrified. Like a statue, he was so still.

      In his daze, the tragedy unfolded.

      Jack, his eldest brother, waist deep in the water, holding Jamie’s hand tightly on the bank as he tried to grasp her.

      Jack carrying his mother’s limp and bedraggled body towards the bank.

      Jamie laying her out on the ground, pumping her chest. The eerie gurgle of water trickling from her mouth with each push. Painful minutes ticking by before pressing his ear to her chest. Shaking his head.

      Joe’s pleading voice. ‘We have to save her. There must be something we can do?’

      His eldest brother’s arms went around his shoulder. He didn’t offer platitudes or false hope, simply his strength, and Jake leaned on him.

      ‘This is all my fault.’

      ‘No, it isn’t. You did all you could.’

      Which was never enough.

      His mother’s lifeless eyes as she gazed up from the mud. That final cold, dead stare out to СКАЧАТЬ