The Arrangement (3 page)

“Not when it has to travel over English roads,” Martin agreed, “and there isn’t any alternative that I have discovered. I’ll go and help Handry with the horses. And then I’ll bring your bags inside.”

One thing Vincent particularly liked about Martin Fisk was that he cared for all his needs without fuss and bluster. Best of all was the fact that he did not
hover
. If Vincent walked into the occasional wall or door or tripped over the occasional object lying in his path or even once in a while tumbled down a flight of steps or—on one memorable occasion—head first into a lily pond, then Martin would be there to deal with any cuts and scratches and other assorted consequences and to make appropriate or inappropriate comments without any sentiment creeping into his voice.

He even occasionally informed his master that he was a clumsy clod.

It was better—ah, infinitely better—than the solicitous care with which almost everyone else of his acquaintance smothered him.

He was an ungrateful wretch, he knew.

Actually, his fellow members of the Survivors’ Club treated him much as Martin did. It was one reason why he loved his annual stay at Penderris Hall so much, he supposed. But then all seven of them had been badly wounded in the wars and still bore the scars inside or out or both. They understood the frustrations of too much sympathetic care.

When he was alone in the house, he made his way to the sitting room on his left, the room in which all the daytime living had been done. Everything was as he remembered it and
where
he remembered it, except for the fact that all the furniture was covered. He moved through to the drawing room, larger and less used than the other room. Sometimes there had been dancing in the drawing room. Eight couples had been able to form for a country set with some comfort, ten with a little less comfort, twelve at a squeeze.

There was a pianoforte in this room. Vincent found his way to it. Like everything else, it was hidden beneath a cover. He was tempted to pull it off, to lift the lid over the keyboard and play. But the instrument must be horribly out of tune.

It was strange that he had never learned to play it when he was a lad. No one had even thought of suggesting that he might. The pianoforte was for the girls, an instrument of torture peculiarly their own—or so Amy, his eldest sister, had always claimed.

Strangely, now that he was here, he missed all three of them. And his mother. Even his father, who had been gone for eight years now. He missed those carefree days of his childhood and youth. And they were not even so very long ago. He was only twenty-three now.

Twenty-three going on fifty.

Or seventy.

He sighed and decided to leave the cover where it was. But standing there at the pianoforte, his hands resting on the top of it, his head bowed, he was suddenly smitten by a familiar tidal wave of panic.

He felt the blood drain from his head, leaving it cold and clammy. He felt the breath cold in his nostrils and so thin that there seemed not enough of it to inhale. He felt all the terror of the unending darkness, of the sure knowledge that if he closed his eyes, as he did now, and opened them again, as he did
not,
he would still be blind.

Always and forever.

With no reprieve.

No light.

Not ever.

He fought to control his breathing, knowing from long experience of such episodes that if he lost control of it, he would soon be gasping for air and even losing consciousness until he came out of his swoon, perhaps alone, perhaps—much worse—with someone hovering over him. But still sightless.

He kept his eyes shut. He counted his breaths again, trying to concentrate upon them to the exclusion of all the thoughts that teemed and tumbled through his mind.

In. Out.

After a while he opened his eyes again and loosened his grip on the top of the pianoforte. He lifted his head. He would be damned, he thought, before he would allow the darkness to encroach upon his inner being. It was enough that it was there outside himself for all time. His own stupidity in battle had caused the outer darkness. He would not compound that youthful folly by allowing the light that was within him to be doused.

He
would
live his life. He would live it to the full. He would make something of it and of himself. He would not give in to either depression or hopelessness.

He would
not,
by God.

He was desperately tired. That was the problem, he supposed, and it was easily solved. He would feel better after a bit of a sleep. He would continue his exploration of the house after that.

He found the staircase with no trouble at all. And he found his way up it without mishap. He found his room without having to feel his way along the wall. He had done it in darkness on numerous occasions when he had sneaked out of the house and in again before daylight.

He turned the knob on his door and stepped inside the room. He hoped there were at least blankets on the bed. He was too tired to worry about sheets. But when he found the bed, he discovered that it was made up as if he had been expected—and he remembered his mother saying that she had left instructions with the biweekly cleaners that the house always be kept ready for the unexpected arrival of a family member.

He removed his coat and boots and cravat and lay down gratefully between the sheets. He felt as if he could sleep for a week.

Perhaps he would spend a week here, alone and quiet in these achingly familiar surroundings, unencumbered by any company other than Martin’s. That should be enough time to get his head firmly on his shoulders so that he could go back to Middlebury Park to
live
and not merely to drift onward.

He had given instructions that the carriage be hidden from sight without delay. He had told Martin to inform anyone who asked that he had come alone to visit his parents at the smithy and that his master had granted him permission to stay at Covington House. Martin would have to tell only one person and within an hour everyone would know.

No one would know
he
was here too.

It all sounded like bliss.

He fell asleep before he could fully enjoy the feeling.

V
incent’s arrival had not gone unobserved.

Covington House was the last building at one end of the main street through the village. To the far side of it was a low hill covered with trees. There was a young woman on that hill and among those trees. She wandered at all times of day about the countryside surrounding Barton Hall, where she lived with her aunt and uncle, Sir Clarence and Lady March, though she was not often out quite this early. But this morning she had woken when it was still dark and had been unable to get back to sleep. Her window was open, and a bird with a particularly strident call had obviously not noticed that dawn had not yet arrived. So, rather than shut her window and climb back into bed, she had dressed and come outside, chilly as the early morning air was, because there was something rare and lovely about watching the darkness lift away from another dawning day. And she had come here in particular because the trees housed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of birds, many of them with sweeter voices than the one that had awoken her, and they always sang most earnestly when they were heralding a new day.

She stood very still so as not to disturb them, her back against the sturdy trunk of a beech tree, her arms stretched out about it behind her to enjoy its rough texture through her thin gloves—so thin, in fact, that the left thumb and right forefinger had already worn through. She drank in the beauty and peace of her surroundings and ignored the cold, which penetrated her almost threadbare cloak as if it were not even there, and set her fingers to tingling.

She looked down upon Covington House, her favorite building in Barton Coombs. It was neither a mansion nor a cottage. It was not even a manor. But it was large and square and solid. It was also deserted and had been since before she came here to live two years ago. It was still owned by the Hunt family, about whom she had heard many stories, perhaps because Vincent Hunt, the only son, had unexpectedly inherited a title and fortune a few years ago. It was the stuff of fairy tales, except that it had a sad component too, as many fairy tales did.

She liked to look at the house and imagine it as it might have been when the Hunts lived there—the absentminded but much-loved schoolmaster, his busy wife and three pretty daughters, and his exuberant, athletic, mischievous son, who was always the best at whatever sport was being played and always at the forefront of any waggery that was brewing and always adored by old and young alike—except by the Marches, against whom his pranks were most often directed. She liked to think that if she had lived here then, she would have been friends with the girls and perhaps even with their brother, although they were all older than she. She liked to picture herself running in and out of Covington House without even knocking at the door, almost as if she belonged there. She liked to imagine that she would have attended the village school with all the other children, except Henrietta March, her cousin, who had been educated at home by a French governess.

She was Sophia Fry, though her name was rarely used. She was known by her relatives, when she was known as anything at all, and perhaps by their servants too, as the mouse. She lived at Barton Hall on sufferance because there was nowhere else for her to go. Her father was dead; her mother had left them long ago and since died; her uncle, Sir Terrence Fry, had never had anything to do with either her father or her; and the elder of her paternal aunts, to whom she had been sent first after her father’s passing, had died two years ago.

She felt sometimes that she inhabited a no-man’s-land between the family at Barton Hall and the servants, that she belonged with neither group and was noticed and cared about by neither. She consoled herself with the fact that her invisibility gave her some freedom at least. Henrietta was always hedged about with maids and chaperons and a vigilant mother and father, whose sole ambition for her was that she marry a titled gentleman, preferably a wealthy one, though that was not an essential qualification, as Sir Clarence was himself a rich man. Henrietta shared her parents’ ambitions, with one notable exception.

Sophia’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of horses approaching from beyond the village, and it was soon obvious that they were drawing some sort of carriage. It was very early in the day for travel. It was a stagecoach, perhaps? She stepped around the trunk of the tree and half hid behind it, though it was unlikely she would be seen from below. Her cloak was gray, her cotton bonnet nondescript in both style and color, and it was still not full daylight.

She saw it was a private carriage—a very smart one. But before she could weave some story about it as it passed along the village street and out of sight, it slowed and turned onto the short driveway to Covington House. It stopped before the front doors.

Her eyes widened. Could it be…?

The coachman jumped down from his perch and opened the carriage door and set down the steps. A man descended almost immediately, a young man, tall and rather burly. He looked around and said something to the coachman—Sophia could hear the rumble of his voice but not what he said. And then they both turned to watch another man.

He descended without assistance. He moved sure-footed and without hesitation. But it was instantly obvious to Sophia that his cane was not a mere fashion accessory but something he used to help him find his way.

She sucked in a breath and hoped, foolishly, that it was inaudible to the three men standing some distance below her. He had come, then, as everyone had said he would.

The blind Viscount Darleigh, once Vincent Hunt, had come home.

Her aunt and uncle would be over the moon with gratification. For they had made up their minds that if and when he came, Henrietta would marry him.

Henrietta, on the other hand, would
not
be gratified. For once in her life she was opposed to her parents’ dearest wish. She had declared more than once in Sophia’s hearing that she would rather die a spinster at the age of eighty than marry a blind man with a ruined face even if he
was
a viscount and even if he
was
far more wealthy than her papa.

Viscount Darleigh—Sophia was convinced that the new arrival must be he—was clearly a young man. He was not particularly tall and he had a slight, graceful build. He carried himself well. He did not hunch over his cane or paw the air with his free hand. He was neatly, elegantly clad. Her lips parted as she gazed down at him. She wondered how much of the old Vincent Hunt was still present in the blind Viscount Darleigh. He had descended from his carriage without assistance. That fact pleased her.

She could not see his face; his tall hat hid it from her view. Poor gentleman. She wondered just how disfigured it was.

He and the burly man stood on the driveway for a few minutes while the coachman went striding off to the back of the house and returned with what must be the key, for he bent to the lock of the front door, and within moments it swung open. Viscount Darleigh ascended the steps before the door, again unassisted, and disappeared inside with the larger man behind him.