Page 38 of A Countess Captured for the Captain
They were sitting with his aunt in the drawing room, engaged in one of their recollections. Samantha had gone out to take the air in the park – at Nox’s aunt’s insistence – and Nox was sitting between his uncle and aunt, being lectured on events surrounding the voyage which had cost his parents their lives.
“I had not wanted to come on zee voyage,” his aunt was saying, shaking her head, as though the memory was painful.
“But you came to accompany my mother?” Nox asked, and his aunt nodded.
“Yes, your mother would have been lonely without my company,” his aunt replied.
“These voyages are tedious, but then you know that. The ship itself belonged to the Duke of Hampton, of course, a trading ship bound for the sugar plantations,” his uncle said, and Nox looked at him in surprise.
“Samantha’s father? But I did not know that. You mean to tell me that our family and hers were already connected before the two of us met?” he said, astonished that his uncle had not told him this before.
“That is correct, yes. The two families go back a long way. But I did not wish to inundate you with such facts until you were ready. There is so much to take in. Besides, it is only a minor matter that the ship belonged to the Duke – it still sank,” his uncle continued.
But Nox was taken aback. He was wary of the Duke – and understandably so, for it was the Duke of Hampton who had had him thrown into prison. He had made no attempt at communication with the Duke, for he believed it would only upset Samantha, who seemed to want nothing to do with her father and spoke only disparagingly of Regina and the expectant heir.
“How far back does our connection go?” he asked, thinking that perhaps an opportunity to heal the rift might come.
He himself would give anything to see his parents again, and the thought of Samantha being estranged from her father had played heavily on his mind. If the opportunity for reconciliation presented itself, then he would gladly take it.
“Your parents were on friendly terms with the Duke’s father, though he himself may not recall it. Our families have intermarried in the past, but there was a drifting apart, these things wax and wane. But there is no reason why such a relationship cannot be repaired. The Duke did agree to your marriage to Samantha, a fact which must surely bode well,” Nox’s uncle replied.
“I agree,” Nox replied, wondering how best to broach the subject to his wife.
“How fares your marriage to Samantha? Is she fulfilling her duties?” Nox’s uncle asked, and Nox nodded.
“I love her with all my heart,” he said, but his uncle shook his head.
“That is not what I am asking. There is no doubting that the two of you are in love, but what I wish to know is whether she understands her role as your Countess. Is she obedient to you? You are the Earl of Brimsey and with that comes grave responsibility,” he said.
Nox felt uncomfortable at such a question. He had no wish to make Samantha a dutiful wife. It was precisely the opposite which had first attracted him to her. She was a free spirit – proved by her resoluteness against marrying Reginald Spencer – and that was what he admired most about her. Samantha was not the sort to be cowed or appear dutiful to anyone.
“Samantha is everything I could desire,” he replied, and his aunt rolled her eyes.
“You must be careful, Norman. She has proved herself a difficult daughter to the Duke of Hampton. Do not let her become a difficult wife to you,” she said.
The interview continued in this manner for much of the morning, though it produced nothing by way of memories. Nox’s uncle explained more about the once strong relationship between the House of Brimsey and that of the Dukes of Hampton. Nox agreed that mending the rift would be of benefit, though he remained wary of approaching Samantha’s father, given the history they shared.
Samantha was still out for her walk and Nox now stood in the hallway, gazing up at the portrait of himself with his mother and father. He may as well have been looking at strangers, though there was no doubting that the child in the painting was him. The features were the same, the look in the eyes, the way his hair parted slightly in the middle – the artist had captured him perfectly.
He was about to go in search of Samantha in the park when a detail in the painting caught his eye. It was one he had not noticed before, a dog in the bottom corner sitting amid a mass of white flowers. In his previous observations of the painting, he had been so intent upon the figures that the face of the creature amid the blooms had eluded him. Now, he stared at the dog, a memory drifting up in his mind and taking him entirely by surprise.
“Achilles,” he exclaimed, as a flood of memories surrounding the dog returned to him.
Achilles had been his own dog and was always digging up the flower beds around the gardens of his father’s estates. That was why he had been painted into the mass of white flowers – a favorite place of his to roll. Nox gave a cry of delight, astonished at having remembered this detail from his misty past, and now he clung desperately to the memory, like finding some long-lost treasure or a door opening up into a whole new world.
“What is the matter, my boy?” his uncle asked, having emerged from the drawing room at Nox’s cry.
“I remember, Uncle, I remember Achilles!” Nox declared, and his uncle raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
* * *
Samantha was walking with Catherine and Rebecca in the park. She had talked of her confusion over Nox and his uncle and aunt, confiding in her friends that she felt somewhat left out from their discussions. Nox had continued to reassure her but there was something strange about the way in which his uncle and aunt were behaving and she was growing ever more convinced that it was a bad idea to allow another to explain one’s history rather than attempt to remember it for oneself.
“But you do not think that they are deceiving him, do you?” Catherine asked, and Samantha shook her head.
“I do not know what to believe. I would not wish to think so, but how can I be sure? He is forced to believe what they tell him, and I have no way of knowing if it is the truth or not,” she replied.
“But surely there was a shipwreck? That much is certain. And Nox’s parents were killed. Again, there is no doubting that. He is the Earl of Brimsey now and all else surely matters little,” Rebecca said.
