Edith Layton (12 page)

“Oh, no.”

“Then why so sad?”

She turned her eyes to his. “Not sad. It’s just that I realized that our search may really be over.”

His expression didn’t change. True, he thought. So, they’d part. He wouldn’t see her again. How could he? Why should he? “Let’s go,” he said, touched the horses with a whip, and they were off down the road.

They rode quietly for a half hour, Daffyd obvi
ously deep in thought. But a half hour was as long as Meg could maintain silence.

“This is better than riding horseback,” she finally said. “And the carriage is well sprung, so I can’t complain. But I’m starting to worry. Can you tell me anything about where we’re going?”

“No place to worry about.”

“But you said there may be people there who would know me.”

“Maybe. My brother may or may not have company. He’s a sociable sort, so you never know.”

“Oh!” she said with relief, only a little annoyed at his idea of a jest. “So, we’re meeting up with the caravan again?”

“No,” he said. “I won’t be seeing Johnny for a while. But he gave me some news. Your Rosalind surfaced recently. She left the fields and haymows and is traveling in plain sight. I suppose the closer she gets to the sea the safer she feels. There’s reason to believe she may have stopped off at my brother’s place. He entertains anyone who amuses him.”

“Oh,” Meg said nervously. “You mean we’re going to see one of your adopted brothers? One of the earl’s three…” She paused and bit her tongue.

Daffyd laughed. “One of the earl’s ‘three disgraces,’ as the nobs in the
ton
named us when we first appeared on the scene with enough money to make them turn green? No. We’re not so lucky today. Both my adopted brothers are recently married. My brother Christian lives near the earl’s estate; my old
mate and brother Amyas, in Cornwall. They’re both building their nests. This is a different relative. A blood relative.”

“Oh,” Meg said, and felt relieved, yet curiously cheated. So they’d go to another gypsy camp. At least, she knew how to behave in one now.

“Yes,” Daffyd said, as he turned the carriage off the road and down a long tree-lined drive. “Another person who won’t turn us away.”

They drove on. Meg tried to relax and not anticipate the future. Finally, Daffyd came to a fork in the road. He turned right and went down a pebbled drive until they came to a small stone cottage. It sat by an iron gate that cut off access to the rest of the drive.

He stopped the carriage. “Ho!” Daffyd called, “Gateman!”

It was a charming cottage, Meg thought, with a small garden bursting with flowers in front, and a rolling meadow in back where cows grazed. She sat still and hoped she looked demure and presentable. A young man came loping out of the cottage and approached the carriage.

He didn’t look much like Daffyd, or Johnny, for that matter. He wasn’t very attractive, with a shock of sandy hair, jug ears, and spots. Though his complexion was dark, it was ruddy, obviously from the sun. Meg pasted a smile on her lips. Johnny’s father must have ranged far.

“Open the gate,” Daffyd said.

“Says who?” the young man asked.

Meg decided it was an old joke with them.

“Says Daffyd,” Daffyd said in bored tones. “Daffyd, the gypsy. Go tell his lordship, and be quick about it.”

The young man gave him a sulky look, but nonetheless went back to the cottage.

“So he’s not your brother?” Meg dared whisper.

“Lord, no!” Daffyd said.

The young man emerged a few minutes later. “I sent word to the main house,” he said grudgingly, then disappeared into the cottage again.

“We’re going to visit your sponsor, the earl?” Meg asked Daffyd fearfully. The earl of Egremont was reputed to be wise, if eccentric. But any man falsely sent to prison, exiled, and then restored to his title and riches and lauded for it, had reason to be odd. Still, an
earl
!

She’d counted herself lucky to have been taken into a baron’s household. Not for the first time, she wished she had a better gown to wear, and looked more presentable. She also suddenly wished she’d never embarked on this mad adventure. All her rationalizations for being here came crumbling down. It was one thing to explain herself to a gypsy. How would she look to an earl?

They waited in silence, Meg thinking of a dozen ways to try to make herself seem respectable.

The young gatekeeper appeared again. He scowled as he marched to the winch at the side of the gates. “You’re to go straight in,” he said, bending to
the wheel and straining at the winch until the great gate began to rise. “His lordship says as to how he was expecting you.”

“He always is,” Daffyd commented, and flipped a coin to the gatekeeper as he drove through.

Whatever the man had thought of his visitor, he plucked the coin from the air quickly enough.

Meg was awed to silence as Daffyd drove down the long, twisting drive. A great architect had obviously engineered it; she’d read about such. The estates near the aunts’ had such roads leading to them, although she’d never walked or driven very far up them. This, like other such grand entrances, was a road that curved and snaked, and doubled back so as to keep showing an estate’s most spectacular views. Such roads weren’t constructed for easy access; they were for visitors who always had time to spare.

They passed huge walls of rhododendron, got glimpses of fountains in the distance, passed a waterfall that spewed into a stream that twisted and chuckled beside the road until it ran beneath a bridge they crossed and then left them altogether. They went over another bridge, this one Oriental, and up a hill, and then under an arch, then straight and then sideways. Then Meg got her first view of a great red house with wings to either side surrounding a shining white oval of a front drive. She lost sight of it a few times more, and then the carriage drove straight up the drive, and stopped.

Meg’s breath did, too.

The manor house was more elegant than any
home she’d ever seen up close. And home it was, because as they stopped, the front door opened, and servants in green-and-white livery came spilling down the stairs.

But all her attention was on the man who emerged, stood in front of the door, then came running lightly down the stairs to greet them. He was dressed exquisitely, like a beau on the strut in London, not a gentleman in the countryside. His tightly fitted green jacket was opened to show an exquisitely tied high white neckcloth with an emerald at his throat. He also had on a shirt of fine white linen, a gold embroidered waistcoat, dark breeches covering his long legs without a wrinkle, and high shining boots. A quizzing glass hung from a golden chain around his neck.

He was tall and very thin, and his light brown hair shone silver in the afternoon sun. His face was lean, his skin pale, his nose long and elegant, and he wore a smile on his long, curling mouth. He was much too young to be the earl of Egremont, though clearly he was master here. Still, Meg thought, such a man would seem to be master anywhere he was.

She’d never seen him before, but his eyes were familiar. They were dark and amused. As he neared and looked up at them, the sunlight showed them to also be dark blue.

“Daffyd! Welcome to my humble abode,” he said in a purring drawl.

“Humble, my Romany bottom,” Daffyd scoffed. “If it gets any more humble, Prinny will try to take it
from you. Good to see you, your lordship. May I present my traveling companion?”

“You certainly must!” the gentleman said.

“This is my traveling companion Miss Margaret Shaw. And Margaret, here is Leland Grant, the Viscount Haye.”

“Margaret? Such a strict name. But you must let me call you Meg,” the gentleman said, smiling up into Meg’s astonished eyes.

“No, she mustn’t,” Daffyd said as he jumped down from the curricle. “She’s not my fancy piece, or anyone’s, for that matter. She really is just a traveling companion.”

“There’s a story behind this. I adore it!” the viscount said. “Trust you, Daffyd, to liven up my hum-drum existence.”

He embraced Daffyd. And to Meg’s shock, Daffyd went willingly into that embrace, and returned it, before he thumped the viscount’s back and stepped away.

“Well met,” Daffyd told him, with a genuine smile.

“And about time, you utter rogue,” the viscount said. “I’ve been perishing from
ennui
, you dog. So if you love me, my dear brother, tell me all!”

“H
alf
brother,” Daffyd corrected the viscount.

Meg still sat in the carriage, staring down at the two men in shock. One brother was tall and fair, relaxed and obviously amused. The other was lean and dark, tense as an oncoming storm.

“Half is as good as a whole,” the viscount told Daffyd. “Better, in fact. Because I’m pleased to call you brother and cannot feel that way about my other wretched sibling, as you well know.”

“Don’t say that in front of your mama,” Daffyd said.

“
Our
mama,” the viscount said. “And why ever not? It’s not as though she doesn’t know.”

“Knowing, and being reminded again and again,
are two different things,” Daffyd said. “One’s truth, the other’s spite.”

“True,” the viscount said. “Your point. But since when are you so compassionate toward her? Is there something I don’t know?”

“No. It’s just that I don’t like being reminded of my connection to her anymore than she does. I thought you were in her good graces.”

“No more than you, Daffy, my dear. I’ve told you that. How tiresome to repeat oneself. You’re quite right about that.”

“My apologies,” Daffyd said without a hint of apology in his voice.

Meg was too busy trying to assimilate the fact that these two men were related to listen to their banter.
Brothers?
she thought, as she saw the lean and languid viscount beaming at Daffyd. This was Daffyd’s
brother
? Not only did they not look alike, but the viscount was as foppish as a fashionable fellow from her grandfather’s day.

“Do come down from your high perch, my dear Miss Shaw,” the viscount said, as though he’d heard her thoughts. “I promise I’m not so wicked as whatever my brother told you.”

“She’s no fool. If I’d told her anything about you she wouldn’t have come this far,” Daffyd said, and held his hand out to her.

Meg took it and stepped down from the curricle in a daze.

The viscount noted it. “You didn’t tell her everything, you monster. Because she obviously didn’t
even know we were related. Such a clever little face she has, but every thought and emotion is writ clear on it. You’ll have to guard her here. Or else,” he added with a wicked smile, “I’ll be forced to do it. My dear,” he told Meg, “welcome.” He swept her a courtly bow. “I am Daffyd’s older, and so very much wiser, brother.”

She sketched a curtsy. “I didn’t know,” she said.

“No, how should you?” the viscount said, taking her hand and putting it on his arm. “Daffyd’s a clam.
So
unlike me. I wear my heart and my history on my sleeve. Which makes him all the more fascinating, don’t you agree? I wish I could master the art of being uncommunicative and gruff. It captivates the ladies. Ah well, I must do what I can with what I am: a merry Andrew. Come,” he said, as he began walking her to the stairs that led to his front door, “I’ve the most charming room for you.”

He paused, and looked over her head at Daffyd, who was pacing along beside her. “You
do
want separate rooms? Or should I just dust off a suite for the two of you?”

“Separate,” Daffyd said curtly. “As I sent to you. She and I are cooperating on a hunt. Nothing else.”

“You disappoint me, brother. And here I thought you had exquisite taste,” the viscount said with a curling smile.

“I do,” Daffyd said. “But so does she. Unfortunately for me.”

That tickled the viscount. He was very merry as he led Meg up the stairs. He told her about her room,
and promised her a delightful visit. He was urbane and charming, and made her feel that she was an equal, even in her horrid gown. He was light-natured and full of jests. She wondered if he was always so amused. And then, remembering whose brother he was, she wondered if he was really amused at all.

Her room was exquisite. But then, everything in the viscount’s house was. What Meg had seen of the place was as elegant as any stately home she’d ever seen, although, admittedly, she’d seen most of them in books. And yet she’d heard the viscount refer to it as his “little country nest.” It took a great many birds to feather this nest, she thought. She’d seen beautiful furniture and valuable curios, it seemed to her there were servants everywhere: all smiling, all ready and willing to run to do her bidding.

It was too bad, Meg thought grumpily, as she sat on the cushioned window seat in her room, that she had no bidding to do.

She washed and refreshed herself as best she could. She had nothing better to wear, nothing that suited any place in this house outside of the servants’ quarters. No, not even there, she thought glumly, because the maids’ uniforms were prettier.

Now, gazing out the window, looking down at the long swathe of lawn, she could see formal flower gardens to the right, with trellises and arches over the lanes that ran through it, all covered with late roses in full bloom. There was a knot garden to the
left, looking like a bit of green tapestry from a medieval manuscript.

And in the distance straight ahead, she could see a huge dark green maze. It staggered her when she realized what it was. She’d read about them, but had never encountered one in reality. She couldn’t see the heart of it even from her high window, but it was clearly a living, growing, symmetrical, intricate maze.

Meg had seen the rich at play in theaters and at balls. She’d seen their fine clothes, expensive carriages, and hordes of servants. But she envied none of it so much as she did the very idea of a maze. That seemed to her to be the ultimate luxury. She was boggled at the thought of anyone having enough money and free time to devote themselves to constructing a living game, a giant puzzle, on their grounds for their visitors to play in. The maze could have been built generations ago, but it took time and money to maintain, and wasn’t a thing one would likely ever use more than once or twice. After all, if you knew the secret of your own maze, why would you go into it again? It was a perfectly glorious and absolute waste of money, done to show the world you could do it.

She’d have loved to go downstairs and lose herself in the maze, just once. But she didn’t budge. Because she could also see people strolling in the gardens below. She saw the tops of ladies’ parasols looking like fantastic pastel blooms bobbing on their shoulders as they meandered through the gardens. She saw gen
tlemen in high beaver hats, swinging their walking sticks as they picked their way down the crushed shell pathways.

She knew she looked as much like the viscount’s other company as his strolling peacocks looked like the sparrows that squabbled in the trees outside her window.

So she waited, because Daffyd had said he’d find out more about Rosalind here. She didn’t know why he’d say such a thing, but in the brief time she’d known him she’d learned not to doubt him. And whatever he learned here might bring her closer to the end of their journey. Meg rested her forehead against the windowpane. Well, if Daffyd was right, Rosie might be near, Meg thought. And if she was, she’d write to the baron, tell him where his runaway daughter was, and then…and then? He’d want to know how she knew.

She’d have to swear Rosie to secrecy when she found her.

But what if Rosie wanted to stay with her lover, and never planned to return? Well, then she’d leave immediately, go to her old governess’s cottage as she’d said she’d done, and write to Rosalind’s parents from there, saying she’d heard where Rosie was.

But maybe Rosie had had enough and wanted to go home. Then she’d be something of a heroine for finding her, and they could surely invent something to save the day for both of them.

But that wouldn’t be likely.

And so now, sitting in a nobleman’s gracious estate miles from her home, and worlds away from where she belonged, with only a few days left to pursue Rosalind, Meg finally admitted that she’d gone on this mad quest for reasons other than the one she’d told Daffyd, and herself.

Because now she saw that from the moment Rosalind had disappeared, she’d known her days of relative freedom were over. And so she’d run away as surely as Rosie had done. Only she’d done it because she’d wanted some adventure in her life before her inevitable retirement to the aunts’.

Meg swallowed hard. That didn’t remove the cold lump blocking her throat, or the one sitting on her heart. The revelation hurt, but it didn’t come as a shock. She supposed she’d known it all along in the back of her mind. Once Rosalind had run away, Meg had seen her own future running down the drain. She’d pursued because she’d wanted to wrest something from life before it all ended, in so many ways, for her.

Daffyd’s kisses had opened her eyes in more ways than one. They made her see that there was only so far she could go, and only so much freedom she could enjoy. That had opened the door to her admitting the rest. And so now, here in the lap of luxury, where she didn’t belong, Meg finally admitted that she hadn’t belonged anyplace she’d been since the moment she’d left the baron’s house.

And so it was no wonder that when the maidser
vants came to her door, they found the viscount’s newest guest to be more morose and defeated-looking than any guest they’d ever met before.

“Oh, miss,” one of them cried, as she curtsied to her. “Never you mind about your lost bags! The master, he sent to the village and got you some fine new gowns, although not half so fine as you’re used to, being as how they’re village made, but they’ll do until we can get better—you’ll see, they’ll do. We’ll help make sure they will.”

The other maid grinned, and held out her arms to show Meg what she carried. She had three gowns neatly draped over her outstretched arms. One was deep coral, another celestial blue, and the third was leaf green. From what Meg could see they were simply styled, but so all gowns were these days: muslin or cotton, either short-or long-sleeved, with skirts that drifted down from high, ribbon-bound waists. But as with most things, taste and money made their presence felt. These gowns showed their line and style, even laid out as they were. Simple the gowns might be, but even Meg could tell they were expensive.

“Oh, no,” Meg said. “I couldn’t.”

“Oh, miss,” the first maid said. “You must! The master says so, and so does your friend, Mr. Daffyd. They want you to come down to join them for tea, and you can’t in what you’re wearing. I mean, begging your pardon, miss, but it’s not your fault that your bags were lost on the coach. And it won’t be the first time we’ve had to scurry to fit out a guest when that happened, will it?”

Meg hesitated. It was social death for a woman to accept any item of clothing from a man that was larger or more intimate than a lady’s fan. But she wasn’t a lady. And it wasn’t as if Daffyd was the one giving clothes to her. The viscount wasn’t a beau, only her host. And most of all, she’d be gone from here in a matter of hours. So just this once…

“Well,” Meg said, eyeing the coral gown with longing. “I suppose, if it’s made clear that I’m only borrowing until my bags are found…”

“Oh, good!” the maids said in unison.

“Miss Shaw!” the viscount exclaimed as he rose to his feet when Meg entered the room. “Behold me ravished.”

“Or so you wish,” Daffyd muttered to him, as he, too, stood.

“Naughty,” his half brother said. “But look at our Miss Shaw. She blooms. Pray do not go into my gardens today, my dear, lest all the roses wilt from pure shame.”

“It’s a lovely gown,” Meg said. The maids had stitched her into it and now it fit to perfection. It was only muslin, but she’d never felt so stylish. “Thank you for the use of it. If you would kindly submit a bill to me, I will see you reimbursed.”

“Oh, never!” the viscount said, a hand up in mock alarm.

“Oh, yes,” Meg said sternly. “I pay my way in this world, my lord. Please understand it’s important for me to do so.” She hoped her meager savings would
cover the expense. Though the dress was village made, it was more elegant than many she’d seen. She hoped the seamstress’s village wasn’t really London, after all.

“As you will,” the viscount said with a bow.

Daffyd smiled.

“But I do appreciate it,” Meg went on. “I had nothing better with me. My other gowns didn’t suit your lovely home,” she said as she gazed around, taking in her surroundings.

The room they were in was clearly done by Adams; he’d used his favorite colors. The walls were blue, their borders gold, and the ceiling high above was painted with pastoral scenes of happy half-dressed peasants, all done in rose and green and gold, against a brilliantly azure sky.

Daffyd looked only at Meg. He knew what her body felt like next to his. He’d seen her figure silhouetted against the firelight. But now at last he saw what she looked like without her usual drab coverings.

Her arms, the skin at her neck and breast, every part of her shapely body that emerged from the flimsy gown, was smooth and pearlescent. She wore no locket at that white breast, but she didn’t need any adornment. Her figure was perfect for the style, as well as for any man he’d ever known. She had firm, high breasts, a slender waist, and—for a small woman—legs that looked long as well. At least, long enough to suit him.

She’d never looked better. It was the color, or the gown, or being in his half brother’s house, but now
she carried herself with more confidence. He realized she must know how the coral color made her eyes glow amber brown and showed how subtly the sunlight had blushed her cheeks.

Or was she actually blushing? He didn’t blame her, he thought with a sudden frown. Lee was eyeing her as though she was one of those scantily clad maidens on the ceiling above them.

“Tea will be in a bit, my dear,” the viscount said. “So should you like a tour of my gardens until then?”

Meg looked at Daffyd. His face seemed to darken with some lowering mood, but he didn’t say anything. She remembered how he’d left her to his other brother’s mercies, and almost said no, though she really did want to see the grounds. Then she recalled that Daffyd had left her in spirit but never in body, because quiet as he’d been, he’d never actually left her alone with Johnny.

“A tour of the gardens? I’d like that,” she said simply. “But please, first, can you tell me anything about my search?” She looked at Daffyd. “You did ask?” she asked him.