A Bride by Moonlight (22 page)

“Lady Hepplewood?”

“Oh, yes.” Diana glanced back from the window. “Did you not know? Mamma was Tony’s first governess. She met Papa her very first day at Loughford. Do you think this filters the light sufficiently?”

Lisette set her head to one side. “We’re facing a little north, so it should do,” she said. “I’d forgotten your father was Hepplewood’s estate agent, as well as his cousin.”

“But Papa was only visiting then,” said Diana, coming back to the table. “He was just up from university, trying to settle on a career. He wanted Hepplewood’s advice.”

Lisette smiled. “Was it love at first sight?”

Diana laughed again. “Mamma said that, for her, it was,” she said. “I think Papa did not fall completely prostrate at her feet until he returned to take up his post. How did your parents meet?”

At Lisette’s wince, Diana stuck out her lip. “Oh, come, I adore romantic stories!”

“I sometimes wonder how romantic it was,” said Lisette on a laugh. “My mother was a seventeen-year-old debutante and Papa was society’s greatest scoundrel. He said he fell in love with her the moment their eyes met. His flirtation caused a frightful scandal. In the end, though, they did marry.”

Diana’s eyes were shining. “And did they live happily ever after?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lisette shrugged. “Does anyone, really?”

“Yes.” Diana circled around the table to her. “Oh, yes, Elizabeth, they do! Don’t you plan to live happily ever after with Lord Saint-Bryce?”

Coming on the heels of Lady Hepplewood’s philosophy of love, Diana’s optimism was refreshing. “Well, one always hopes for happiness,” she said vaguely. “But sometimes fate intervenes in ways one cannot expect.”

“But you
do
love him, do you not?” Diana surprised Lisette by seizing both her hands. “Oh, my dear, if you do not, you must on no account marry him. Please, promise me you will not. Nothing should stand in the way of true love—and if you marry now, you’ll never find it.”

Lisette was confused. “But . . . you were going to marry the previous baron,” she said.

Diana hesitated for a heartbeat. “Well, my situation was different,” she said, squeezing Lisette’s hands hard. “But I was so very fond of Saint-Bryce. I had known him since childhood. He was a fine man. A good man.”

“And Lady Hepplewood insisted,” Lisette added, “didn’t she?”

Diana cut her gaze away.

“Diana, did you have to marry him?” she asked, dropping her voice. “I mean, you can marry elsewhere, can you not? You . . . you have been provided for?”

Diana turned back, her eyes softening almost tenderly. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Well provided for. Lord Hepplewood set aside twenty thousand pounds as my marriage settlement in gratitude to Papa. As to Papa, he has done very well for himself. He invests in railroads. I’m his only child.”

“Then you have only to meet your knight in shining armor,” said Lisette brightly. “But Diana, you aren’t apt to meet him here. You . . . why, you should go to London. You should have a Season.”

Diana shrugged. “I did; I came out with Anne,” she said, returning to her drapery samples. “Cousin Cordelia sponsored us the same year. But I’m beyond such nonsense now. Honestly, I should rather we all just went home.”

“Home, to your father?”

“Home to Northumberland.” Diana did not quite meet her gaze. “Yes, to Papa. To . . . all of it, really.”

At last Lisette saw the truth. “Oh, Diana,” she murmured, “do you dislike it here so very much?”

For a time, Diana just fiddled with her fabrics. “We don’t belong here,” she finally said, crushing a wad of cream-colored linen onto the table. “It’s Gwyneth’s house to run now—well, until Duncaster dies—and she doesn’t want anyone’s help. She certainly didn’t want me to marry her father. Anne affirmatively hates me. Cousin Cordelia is miserable and if Tony stays in Town, he’s apt to get . . . well, all I’m saying is I don’t know why we must stay on.”

“Oh, Diana . . .”

Diana gave a sharp sigh. “Lord, I must sound so ungrateful!” she said. “Yes, Cousin Cordelia says we will probably take a little house in Town eventually. And she says Gwyneth must go as well, and stop keeping Mrs. Jansen from her duties.”

But she did not look especially happy about any of it. Lisette was beginning to think Diana and Lady Hepplewood were like millstones around each other’s necks. As to Gwyneth and Lady Hepplewood—or Gwyneth and Mrs. Jansen—Lisette dared not speculate.

“Then next year, perhaps Town will have more appeal,” she said neutrally.

“Well, we might have gone this year.” Diana had opened a small pasteboard box filled with tassels and was poking through it. “But everyone’s in mourning.”

Lisette propped one hip on the edge of the table and watched her work for a moment. “Diana,” she said curiously, “how did Lord Saint-Bryce die? I never heard.”

Diana looked up from the box. “Apoplexy, Dr. Underwood said, though for a time we thought he might recover.”

“So it was not . . . sudden?”

“No, he survived for a time,” she said. “But he could not speak, and his right arm and leg would not work. Walton and Prater had to carry him to his bed.”

“Well, thank goodness they found him,” said Lisette.

“But they didn’t,” she said, blinking rapidly. “
I
did.”

“You did?” Lisette echoed. “Oh, Diana, how terrible!”

She looked suddenly grief stricken. “I was passing by his study on my way to the schoolroom,” she said. “I heard this frightful thud and just knew something bad had happened. When I went in, he could not speak. Fortunately, Walton and Prater were just around the corner.”

“Well,” said Lisette pensively. “How life does change, and in the twinkling of an eye. Speaking of which—will Lady Hepplewood reconcile herself, do you think, to Miss Willet?”

Diana laughed. “Oh, that betrothal will never last,” she said, holding the tassels straight out in both hands. “Which do you think? The blue? Or the gold?”

“Well, there isn’t much color in the main reception rooms,” remarked Lisette, who had begun to drift about the bedchamber. “They are neutral, but pleasingly so.”

“I know,” said Diana. “I chose all the furnishings. I love ivories and golds. And Cousin Cordelia really does not care, so long as everything is of the finest quality imaginable.”

“Is that what Loughford looks like?” Lisette stopped by the hearth, and turned. “Everything of the finest quality?”

“Oh, yes, but everything there is old,” said Diana, warming to the topic. “Classically so. Loughford is—oh, it is, I think, the most beautiful house on earth.”

“And yet it is in disrepair,” said Lisette.

Diana’s head jerked up from her work. “Who told you that?”

Lisette felt her eyes widen. “I—why, it was Gwyneth, I think.”

“Gwyneth is full of nonsense.” Diana sounded exasperated. “The house is well kept.”

“Perhaps Lady Hepplewood merely suggested otherwise to her brother?” Lisette lightly suggested. “Perhaps she wished an excuse to stay here instead?”

Diana opened her mouth, then shut it again, apparently pondering. “That may be so,” she finally admitted. “But the pair of them—Duncaster and his sister—are thick as thieves.”

“Ah.”

Lisette continued to drift for a time, admiring the elegant chimneypiece and a landscape hanging upon it. Diana pinned the samples and took them to the window in turn, occasionally asking her opinion. When she’d settled on the champagne with gold tassels with a white muslin backing, Diana turned to the pieces of leather—Lady Hepplewood wished to have a pair of sofas to flank the hearth, she said.

It seemed a frightful extravagance for a room to be used only on occasion, and Lisette could only conclude Lady Hepplewood suffered no shortage of funds. Or perhaps Duncaster gave her an allowance for the furnishings? Or paid the bills outright?

Musing on it, Lisette bent down and picked up an oddly pierced kettle that hung from a long hook in the firebox. “This is lovely,” she remarked.

“Isn’t it?” said Diana, sorting out her scraps. “Saint-Bryce—Gwyneth’s father, I mean—brought it home from his travels in the Orient—or was it was Africa? He was a great traveler in his youth. I don’t know what the thing’s purpose was—some heathen ceremony, no doubt—but we found it useful for steaming herbs.”

The thing was remarkably ornate and heavy, with a chamber for water, and a pierced platform above. “What sort of herbs?” she asked.

Diana took a pin from her mouth. “Like lavender and rosemary for restlessness,” she said, “or eucalyptus for congestion. Lord Hepplewood rested far better when it was steaming.”

“How soothing,” she said, putting it back on it’s hook. “Well, have you decided?”

“No, come look,” asked Diana a little fretfully. “Do you think this will alter in the afternoon light?”

Lisette put the contraption back and returned to the table. As they began another round of pinning and choosing, she began gently to pry. “Lord Hepplewood’s last days must have been difficult for Lady Hepplewood,” she said absently. “I understand he had become senile?”

Diana flicked her gaze up. “At first he was just weak and a little confused,” she said. “Toward the end, though, yes, he began to ramble incoherently.”

Lisette leaned over the table. “Is that why they argued so often?” she asked, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “Had he gone out of his head? Become hard to manage?”

Lips pursed, Diana set her pincushion aside. “Lord Hepplewood wanted us all to go home,” she said. “Perhaps they quarreled about that once or twice. I believe that . . . well, perhaps he feared he was dying? And one always wishes, I think, to die at home in one’s own bed.”

“But Lady Hepplewood did not wish to return?”

Diana shook her head.

“Why?”

Diana lifted her slender, birdlike shoulders. “Cousin Cordelia says Northumberland is too cold,” she said. “And that it’s time Tony got out on his own, and experienced a taste of life in London.”

“Apparently he got more than a taste,” said Lisette dryly. “Besides, he must be nearly my age. Had he never ventured from home?”

“He spent, I think, two years at Oxford,” said Diana, “but it did not suit him. And he whiled away a Season or two in London, but nothing came of it.”

Lisette was confused. “When the late earl was working in London, did Tony and Lady Hepplewood not accompany him?”

“Sometimes.” Diana picked a bit of lint from her fabric. “Generally, though, he took the train down alone, and stayed in Clarges Street,” she said. “Tony never seemed to have much interest in politics—and until recently, no interest in society.”

It was odd, thought Lisette. The new Earl of Hepplewood did not sound quite as bad as the prodigal Napier had described. Perhaps it was true that Diana had blinders on where Tony was concerned.

Lisette pondered how to ask her next question, and came up with nothing tactful. “Duncaster told us Hepplewood accused Lady Hepplewood of trying to kill him,” she said quietly. “He didn’t credit it, of course. And then there were some strange letters Hepplewood wrote to Whitehall . . .”

“Letters?” Diana looked stricken, her head jerking up like a startled deer. “Is that why Napier—Lord Saint-Bryce—started coming here?”

“I’m not perfectly sure.” Lisette shrugged. “We don’t often discuss his work. Did you help care for Lord Hepplewood?”

Diana swallowed hard, and nodded. “We all did. I sat with him almost every day. Gwyneth, too. When he was ill, we soothed his brow with cool compresses and cajoled him into taking his beef tea. We took turns reading the Bible, and even the newspapers.”

“You must have loved him very much,” said Lisette softly.

“I did!” She looked suddenly as if she might burst into tears. “He was—why, he was like a grandfather to me. I owed him
everything
. I was devastated when he died. We all were.”

“Even Lady Hepplewood?”

“Yes.” Diana nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes, even given their age difference, theirs was a love match. In later years, yes, they may have had quarrels. What couple does not?”

It was precisely what Duncaster had said—and it left Lisette deeply puzzled. In her admittedly limited experience, quarrels came early in a relationship, not after long years of marriage.

She opened her mouth to press the issue but was interrupted when the door swung open again. It was Prater, who had cast off his livery in favor of a long canvas apron.

“Marsh has given me leave to help you, Miss Jeffers,” he said. “Just tell me what I’m to do.”

With a murmured apology to Lisette, Diana excused herself and went to the pile of discarded green fabrics. Lisette watched for a moment, her mind turning over all that she had learned. But Diana was obviously well occupied now.

After a murmured good-bye and an absent wave, Lisette began the long trek back to her bedchamber, feeling oddly uneasy—and more uncertain—than ever.

CHAPTER 9

Every True and Perfect Thing

“A
ll the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare once wrote, “and all the men and women merely players.” And in Royden Napier’s estimation, no one embraced that concept more thoroughly than his temporary fiancée. Even he, long hardened by skepticism, could at times believe the infernal woman half in love with him.

The resulting emotions left him feeling perplexed and oddly thwarted.

Over tea at Squire Tafton’s tidy manor on a graying afternoon, Elizabeth played the doting wife-to-be to perfection, tucking close against him on Mrs. Tafton’s snug camel-backed settee, and gazing adoringly up at him at every opportunity.

With her warm scent wafting up to tease at his nostrils, Elizabeth regaled their hosts with hilarious anecdotes from his childhood—made entirely of whole cloth, but gleaned, she glibly lied, from his dear old nanny. Then she explained in dramatic detail how her eyes had first met Napier’s across a crowded drawing room. She had known at once, Elizabeth declared on a breathless sigh, that he was
The One.

The squire smiled, and declared Napier the most fortunate of men.

Napier thought he was instead the most stupid—and perhaps the most besotted—for listening to Elizabeth’s tales even a tiny bit wistfully. She was patently dangerous. And he—well, when in God’s name had
he
turned starry-eyed?

He was the last man on earth who should have done so. As a child, he’d never even read fairy tales, let alone believed them. In his work at Number Four, he dealt on a daily basis with the darkest deeds a man’s soul could conceal. Oh, he had known women—delightful, deeply desirable women, some of them—and had the honor of bedding a few. But not a one had made him feel a hearts-and-flowers sort of longing.

And he didn’t feel it now, damn it.

What he felt was lust, he assured himself. A burning, seething lust for a woman who was a near stranger to veracity—a lust he’d half a notion to put to an end in that most expedient and effective of ways: by taking the red-haired vixen up on the suggestion that sometimes lingered in her eyes.

Suddenly, Napier realized that, for decency’s sake, he needed to shift a little bit away from said vixen.

He forced his focus mind back to his hosts and imagined
them
naked in bed. It was an effective countermeasure, his burgeoning erection shriveling at once. Missing several teeth, Tafton was a lanky, sprawling, good-natured fellow who took his tea with more enthusiasm than grace.

His wife was round and plump, and almost shyly bedazzled by her guests. Unaccustomed as he was to blinding anyone with his charm, Napier tried not to snort out loud.

As to Elizabeth, she quickly set Mrs. Tafton at ease. Too much at ease, perhaps, for Napier’s comfort, because as soon as the tea tray was removed, Mrs. Tafton asked a little wistfully if Miss Colburne would care to see the newest little Tafton?

For the first time, Napier saw a look of grave uncertainty dash across Elizabeth’s face. But it was quickly veiled.

“Oh, yes, if you please, ma’am,” she said breathlessly. “It would be my greatest pleasure.”

“We have our two girls, both half grown,” said Tafton once his wife disappeared up the staircase, “and the apples of my eyes they are. But a son—well, I don’t mind telling you, my lord—we’d pretty nearly given up hope.”

Napier understood that, to a country squire, a son was of the utmost importance. Daughters, it was to be hoped, would marry well and go on to live their own lives with whatever family they married into. But a son was expected to stay behind, to help his father run the farm, and in time, run it himself.

In a trice, Mrs. Tafton was back down the stairs with a bundle in her arms, a young housemaid trailing dutifully behind. “And here is our Andrew, Miss Colburne,” she declared, bending over to present him for Elizabeth’s inspection. “Just up from his nap, he is, so in a fine temper, too.”

Napier leaned over and dutifully declared the infant the handsomest of children—which, in his limited experience, was perfectly true. Andrew Tafton had the roundest blue eyes he’d ever seen, and a pair of fat, cherubic cheeks to go with them. And when the child encircled Elizabeth’s index finger in one of his tiny fists, kicking his feet with such joy and vigor, Napier felt something almost painful tug inside his heart.

But Elizabeth merely sat speechless, her face gone a little pale.

Mrs. Tafton seemed not to notice, and thrust the child at her. “Would you care to hold him in your lap, Miss Colburne?”

Elizabeth seemed to return to herself with a little jerk. “Oh,
yes
,” she whispered, extending her arms.

Mrs. Tafton placed the bundle gently in her arms, and for an instant, Elizabeth sat rigidly forward on the sofa, the child borne awkwardly across her elbows.

“Oh, you may tuck him close, my dear,” said the squire’s wife dotingly. “Andrew shan’t shatter, I promise.”

At that, Elizabeth cast a shining, almost hopeful gaze up at Mrs. Tafton, then drew the child to her breast. Fisting both hands, the babe yawned hugely, then relaxed into a drowse again, his pale, feathery lashes sweeping half shut.

For a time the room was held captive, as Elizabeth rocked the child and cooed the silliest things while the squire and his wife looked on with delight. But it was not the happiness upon his hosts’ face that tore at Napier’s heart.

It was the look upon Elizabeth’s.

As she gazed down at the child held so gingerly to her heart, her soft expression held both joy and sorrow, and told him more than a thousand words might have done.

He wondered, fleetingly, if she were unable to bear children. She was some years past the age when a woman would be expected to marry, and God knew she was beautiful in an unusual way. But many men, he knew, simply would not consider taking a barren wife—though the very word grated on Napier. It was cold term, and full of ugly implications.

And in her case, it seemed especially cruel, for a woman of Elizabeth’s intelligence and determination would have so much more to give a man than a mere child.

Yet it was her intelligence and determination that had brought her life perilously near ruin, Napier suspected. Perhaps that accounted for her unwed, childless state? Perhaps Elizabeth’s priorities had required her to coldly pare away certain choices from her life.

What a shame—and what a loss—were that true.

Soon enough, however, Elizabeth passed the child back to Mrs. Tafton, her face fixed into that smooth, smiling countenance again, her every true emotion carefully masked. There was no point, he realized, in mentioning the fleeting pain he’d seen on her face. It couldn’t be his concern. And he knew Elizabeth would have denied the emotion.

When at last they had taken their leave of the squire and his lady, Napier handed Elizabeth back up into their borrowed curricle, and tried to forget how she’d looked with the child tucked to her breast.

“Well, how did that go?” she murmured when he leapt up beside her.

He cut her a dark, sidelong glance. “Those poor people are destined be twice disillusioned,” he muttered, snatching up the reins. “Once when the wedding falls through, and again when it dawns on them what a sorry specimen of landed gentry they’re getting for a neighbor.”

Elizabeth gave an unladylike guffaw, sounding entirely recovered. “At least you’ve begun to accept your fate.”

“Which fate would that be?” he said quietly, giving the reins a snap. “The fact that you wouldn’t have me? Or my pending lord-of-the-manor incompetence?”

At that, the laughter left Elizabeth’s eyes, and she looked at him very oddly.

Damned bloody idiot,
he thought.

Where had those words come from? But her mouth slowly twisted into a wry smile. “Oh, I think we’re both too jaded to believe our own lies,” she said. “But as to you, Napier, I think you give yourself too little credit.”

“Oh?” he managed, cutting her another sidling glance. “How’s that?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Why, managing an estate like Burlingame Court cannot be any more difficult than managing the Metropolitan Police—vastly easier, I daresay.”

“I can’t think how,” he said, “when I scarcely know corn from hay.”

“Do you know every street corner and watch-box in greater London? Every magistrate in Westminster? All the laws of the land?”

“No, but—”

“No, but you administer justice all the same,” she interjected. “You‘ll find administering an estate no different. I expect it’s more about having a knack for management, and a grasp of human nature. It is not about one’s book knowledge, for that can be had from . . . well,
books
.”

Oddly, her opinion reassured Napier, though she could not have known much more on the subject than he did. “Speaking of a knack for management,” he said dryly, “you managed our hosts rather handily.”

She looked at him archly. “Is that not what I was employed to do?”

“You do it rather too well,” he complained. “You’re charming and witty and beautiful—and I’ll be thought an idiot and a cad when you throw me off.”

“Oh, Napier, such lofty compliments! Careful your tongue doesn’t turn black.” She lifted her chin, eyes sparkling green with mischief in the afternoon light. “Besides, perhaps you will throw me off instead?”

“And be thought an outright scoundrel?” he said, frowning. “Come, Elizabeth. We had this discussion somewhere between Twyford and Reading. I cannot do it.”

Elizabeth sat uneasily at his elbow as they spun between Squire Tafton’s gateposts and onto the village road. Suddenly, she glanced back over her shoulder with a wistful expression. “I liked them, but they will forget about us soon enough,” she said in a voice that held more hope than certainty. “Won’t they? Everyone, I mean. We will go back to London, and if God is kind, your grandfather will live a while yet. We will go back to our ordinary lives.”

He made a dismissive sound. “You wouldn’t know an ordinary life if it jumped up and bit you,” he said, casting his gaze heavenward. “Nor, perhaps, would I. And now look. It’s going to rain.”

“Blame the unseasonable heat, not me.” Elizabeth was neatening the pleats of her carriage dress. “Just hurry your horses a little.”

He did, but the drive back to Burlingame’s gate was six miles by village road, and another four along the winding drive that led to the house. Soon the rain began to patter a little, the temperature dropping precipitously. In the trees that lined the road, leaves began to ruffle in great waves, and then to flick upside down.

Napier pushed on, but as they passed through the village, an ominous crack of thunder rattled the windows in the Duck and Dragon. He started to pull in—and should have done—but in the graveled yard a snorting, white-eyed bay was wheeling his hindquarters wildly, kicking up gravel and grit as an ostler fought to hold its head, while a black-and-red mail coach was drawing up from the opposite direction, three thoroughly drenched fellows swaying upon the top bench.

Thinking the poor ostler had his hands full, Napier drove on. It was to be the least of his mistakes that afternoon. Half a mile later, Elizabeth was pulling her shawl tighter, and casting up anxious glances.

“Perhaps we might wait it out?” she finally suggested. “The folly tower, perhaps?”

“Too far,” he said, “and Craddock has it locked so they can rig up scaffolding. The parapet’s giving way.”

“Yes, Gwyneth borrowed the key from Marsh last week,” she replied. “I nearly died of exhaustion climbing up, but if you make it to the very top and lean far, far over the edge, you can see for fifty miles.”

He shot her a dark look.

“What?” Lisette threw back her head and laughed. “I’m teasing. We were careful. And it’s only thirty miles.”

Napier just shook his head. “We had better go in by the back drive,” he said. “I know a place we can stop.”

By the time they did so, however, the rain had commenced in earnest with a promise of a true torrent rolling over the horizon, the source of the mail coach’s drenching, no doubt. After a quarter mile, Napier gave up and turned his team down a side lane. In a matter of minutes, they reached the little spinney he remembered that stretched beyond either side of the road.

Leaping from the seat, he went around to hand Elizabeth down. “The gamekeeper’s cottage is through those trees,” he shouted over the rain. “Better a cup of tea with Mrs. Hoxton than your taking a chill from the damp.”

“I assure you, I’m not that frail,” said Elizabeth.

Napier turned to secure the horses. “And I hear we’ve a footman half dead already,” he said. “So have a care.”

“It’s dyspepsia, not a chill.”

“Then it’s a dashed bad case,” Napier answered, grabbing her hand and starting into the wood. “Duncaster said they’d sent to Marlborough for the doctor. Poor devil turned convulsive in the night.”

“Dear God.” Elizabeth looked suddenly solemn. “I hadn’t heard.”

Taking her hand, Napier led her along the footpath through the trees. Here the rain was a bit less fierce as the silence of the wood settled around them. But his boots were beginning to sop and he could only imagine the state of Elizabeth’s dainty slippers.

A few yards along, they reached the house he’d espied on one of his rides with Craddock; the old gamekeeper’s cottage, the estate agent had called it. But Napier should have taken better heed, he belatedly realized, of that word
old
, for after dashing up the steps he realized there was a decided air of abandonment about the place.

Abandonment, perhaps, was not the word. The house was well kept like all of Burlingame, but the curtains were drawn, the stoop scattered with leaves, and no sign of life within. Hammering upon the door with one hand, he drew Elizabeth into his lee with the other.

“No one lives here,” she said, beginning to shiver. “J-Just lift the latch.”

After a moment, he did so, pushing open the door to a cool, shadowy parlor and a hearth that likely hadn’t seen a fire in months. The sharp tang of lime dust hung in the air, but the room was partially furnished with an oak settle, a table with chairs, and a thick, well-worn red carpet beneath the whole. More importantly, a coal scuttle sat near the grate.