The Heart Denied (2 page)

Wycliffe Hall

June 29, 1728

Behind a desk that nearly dwarfed her, Dame Priscilla Carswell shot to her feet. "How
dare
you barge in here unannounced."

"I dare," Tobias Hobbs fired back, "the way the Combs wench dared barge into my stables this morn." He slapped his cap against his thigh. "Keep your fool maids in the Hall where they belong, Carswell. I'm stable master, not a bloody nursemaid. I've no time for their bawling."

"Yet you've ample time for their deflowering," the housekeeper retorted, blushing to the roots of her perfect white coif.

Hobbs smirked. "They come to me, and I'm not one to refuse. But I've my hands full just now-"

"And you think I don't?" Dame Carswell folded scrawny arms over her pleated stomacher. "With his lordship to arrive from University in two days, his guests even sooner, and my best maid sick as a pup over the way you've used her? Twice this morn I've sent her topstairs to collect herself!" The housekeeper's beady eyes flashed as she rapped a finger on the desk blotter. "Elaine Combs is not your common trollop, and 'twas
you
hounding
her
a month ago. So you've brass, Toby Hobbs, marching into my office with your dung stench and acting my superior! I shall speak to Pennington straightaway-"

"You do that, you old crow. He doesn't want her in the stables any more than I do." Hobbs turned on a mud-caked heel and, stealing a backward glance at the housekeeper's livid expression, sauntered across the great hall and out through the kitchen, tipping his hat to blushing maids all the way.

* * *

Thorne stared out the coach window, his gut tightening as Wycliffe Hall slid into view. A jewel, some called the huge Tudor hall with the flagged terraces and sloping gardens, faceted as it was by numerous oriels and gables and set in such lush Northamptonshire countryside. But the jewel had a flaw. Meant to save lives, the towering stone keep at its northeast corner had so far only taken one.

The coach ascended the winding flagstone drive. Reaching the terrace, Thorne watched paneled-oak doors with leaded lights swing wide on the portico.

A tall, white-haired man in gray livery stood framed in the doorway, looking so confounded that Thorne had to chuckle. "Steady, Jennings," he said, alighting from the coach. "I'm two days early, not back from the dead."

A snap of the old butler's bony fingers brought two footmen scurrying out for Thorne's trunk. "Welcome home, M'lord," Jennings croaked, bowing as Thorne doffed his tricorne and ascended the portico. "Though 'tis rather topsy-turvy just now."

Thorne crossed the threshold and peered between the carved-oak panels of the draft screen. "I quite see what you mean."

Gray-frocked women swarmed the great hall, some polishing glass chimneys, others waxing the parquet flooring, still others remounting the tapestry over the massive mantelpiece. Several footmen hauled a settee and some rolled carpets from the east wing into the west.

All this, for me and two guests?
Perhaps word had leaked that one of his guests would soon be mistress of Wycliffe Hall?

Behind him, Jennings cleared his throat. "We'd have gathered to greet you properly, had we known-"

"Then I've spared the lot of us, haven't I." Dodging the commotion, Thorne walked the great hall of his ancestors, reacquainting his gaze with the carved-oak wainscoting, the arched braces and blackened collar-beams high overhead. The old oak trestle table stood, newly sanded and waxed to a shine, on the dais with twenty chairs at either side, all under the same three-tiered chandelier from which he'd once managed a swing and gotten baptized with hot wax for his trouble.

He smiled inwardly to see the servants going about their work as if he wasn't there; Carswell had always run a tight ship. "Where is the old dame?" he muttered over his shoulder.

"She's been fetched, M'lord," Jennings said, predictably at Thorne's heels.

"His lordship's chambers are not readied." Dame Carswell's steel-velvet voice accompanied a staccato step that double-timed Thorne's easy stride. "Leave his trunk outside my office."

The footmen hauling the trunk nearly fell down the stairs in their haste to obey. The housekeeper turned to Thorne and curtseyed. "M'lord, what a pleasant surprise." Swathed in black bombazine, her white cuffs and cap as starched as her backbone, Dame Carswell spared him a tight-lipped smile. "We might have been prepared for your early arrival if not for Tobias Hobbs' meddling."

Thorne arched one eyebrow. "A matter for Pennington, surely."

"I have informed him, M'lord."

"And my guests, have they arrived early as well?"

"No, M'lord."  

"Thank Providence for small favors, eh Carswell?"

Her mouth only grew more pinched.

"Never mind, you'll soon have everything to rights." Teasing her had amused him when he was a pup and his father had left the discipline to her; now it seemed tiresome. He gazed easily over her head. "Where is Pennington?"

"In the south pasture, M'lord. Some ewes are down, I believe."

Thorne's pulse tripped. "
There's
a welcome home." With a cursory nod for Carswell, he strode toward the kitchen and the nearest rear exit.

Suddenly he slowed his pace, his eye catching a movement on the musicians' gallery. No one had been up there in the eighteen years since his mother died. His father had forbidden it, along with music in general. As Thorne gazed up intently, a figure stepped back into the shadows, its slender gray sleeve and pale hand disappearing as the narrow gap in the curtains closed.

He thought about slipping up the service stairs to catch the servant red-handed, but he had reached the kitchen door by then. He opened it to a blast of steam, smelling of onions, thyme, and roasted meat. Chatter died, replaced by gasps from the scullery maids. A kettle lid clattered on the stone floor.

"Have a care, Hillary. Bless ye, Master Thorne...M'lord...ye're home!" A frowsy-haired woman materialized from the haze, her flour-covered hands clasped to her bosom, her old eyes misting. "Och, and look what a man ye've growed into!"

"A man indeed," someone exclaimed, prompting a whispered "whusht" and a giggle. Thorne paused to give the cook a courtly bow and a droll wink, and then turned and strode backward as he headed for the rear entry. "'Tis grand to see you, Mistress MacBride," he called out over the sounds of hissing steam, sizzling meat and popping coals. "Of all I missed at University, 'twas you I missed most."

"Ha! More likely ye missed my scones," she crowed back at him, her ruddy cheeks turning redder.

Thorne halted in the doorway, grinning. "Any fresh?"

"Maids or scones, M'lord?" Mistress MacBride countered, with a wry glance at her scullery crew. "Aye, we'll have them in a trice." She shook a finger at Thorne. "But only if ye call me 'Bridey,' like ye've always done."

He chuckled. "Very well, Bridey. Send the scones 'round to the library with a pot of tea in an hour. With two cups."

He saw her sudden consternation, and heard it when she must have thought he was out of earshot.

"Eating in the old baron's reading room," she fussed; but then she cautioned her giggling maids. "Mind ye've no fool notions, he's not Young Master anymore. He's our lord and liege now, and I'd best remember it quick as any of ye."

Out in the foyer, Thorne smiled to himself. If only Carswell were so adaptable. 

* * *

"Aye. Two of Graham's ewes were found dead this morn," Arthur Pennington, longtime steward of Wycliffe Hall, replied with a grim nod.

"Anthrax?" Thorne held his breath.

"God willing, no. Kendall's having a look. He'll send word."

Thorne nodded, treading carefully over the herders' rutted path in the buckled shoes he had not bothered to change. Arthur was his mentor, but he tended to put more stock in God than Thorne was willing to invest. He only hoped his arrival home didn't mark the loss of their entire flock--a sorry way to carry on his father's decades of hard work.

Thorne stared off at the manor church, nestled in a hollow near a copse of trees. Arthur must have noticed the direction of that stare.

"He's missed by all," the steward said quietly. "Parson finds a fresh posy on the gravestone every Sunday. Hasn't a notion who's leaving it there."

Shame, and something close to rebellion, twisted Thorne's belly, with the thought that, while he was hiding away at Oxford, someone who wasn't even kin had paid regular tribute at his father's grave.

"And the salmon?" He gazed at the stone bridge over the deep, silent currents of the beck. An approaching cloudband shadowed its gray waters.

"A good haul. Thirty stone or better," Arthur replied. They had reached the rear gardens, where the steward leaned against the gatepost and lit his brier pipe. "When will your guests arrive?" he asked after a few puffs.

"Any hour now. Best not tell Carswell, though."

Unsmiling, Arthur drew on his pipe again and said casually, "No doubt you're looking forward to meeting Radleigh's daughter."

"Aye, considering she's to be my wife." Thorne frowned. "What's on your mind, Arthur?"

"Thought you might have heard. Rumor has it Radleigh is in financial trouble." Arthur quietly cleared his throat. "Gaming debts."

With a warning rumble, clouds broke overhead. An omen? Thorne turned his face in defiance to the cold rain and forced some cheer into his voice. "Come inside and join me for tea."

"Tea, M'lord?"

"An Eastern ritual I've got used to with friends in Chigwell. You'll like it, I think." Holding the gate wide for Arthur, he winked. "Better than drowning, at any rate."

* * *

Hunkered down in a velvet wingback chair, breathing the perfume of leather-bound books and burning apple-wood, Thorne watched through the wavy glass of the library solar as the rain pelted smiling stone cherubs in the garden. He felt oddly content. If his bride proved sensible, he could imagine a pleasant enough future at Wycliffe Hall.

In another chair, Arthur sat with his gray head bowed, his teacup dangling from one finger. Thorne's mouth twitched. "So, what's Carswell's gripe with Hobbs?"

Arthur jerked upright. "Glory, but you've your father's way of catching me off guard." He set the cup in its saucer as Thorne grinned. "Toby, aye. Seems Carswell's pet maid took a shine to him, and whatever he did - or didn't do - the wench took it to heart. Combs is her name. Elaine Combs."

Thorne unbuckled a shoe and tossed it aside. "Hobbs is roughly twenty now?"

"Aye, five years younger than your lordship."

Thorne winced. "Spare me the lordship drivel, Arthur, at least when we're alone." He aimed for the first shoe with the second, nailed his target, and propped his stocking-feet on an ottoman. "If Hobbs can't sow his oats elsewhere, we'd best find a new stableman."

"Stable master," Arthur reminded him. "And first-rate with the horses. He's quite impressed with the Arabian you sent ahead from Chigwell, by the by. Gone to great lengths to make him feel at home."

Buttering a scone, Thorne grunted. "Could be a waste of time. My friend Townsend will demand a rematch. He was well into his cups that eve, and royally brassed off at himself come morn. But as long as the stallion is here, I intend to ride for all it's worth.

"And then there's Henry."

"Who?"

"Little Henry Pitts. Stable lad," Arthur explained, seeing Thorne's blank look. "Our Toby found him starving in London and took him to apprentice. Hard-working lad, good disposition."

"So, you're telling me Hobbs has a heart...yes, Jennings?" Thorne said, looking past Arthur with arched brow. The head-footman had just flung open the library doors.

"Begging your pardon, M'lord." Color spotted Jennings's gaunt cheeks; he seemed to relish his role after four years with no one to announce but agents and tax collectors. "Lord Radleigh and The Honourable Miss Stowington await you in the great hall."

* * *

Caught in a hearty embrace by his father's oldest and dearest friend, Thorne first glimpsed his bride-to-be over the big man's shoulder.

What irony that her eyes were green, the second pair to pierce his heart today. As they widened at the sight of him, he wondered if she'd ever seen a man at close range, other than her father. And her priest. She was, after all, fresh from the convent.

"May I present my daughter, Gwynneth." Perspiration coated Radleigh's brow as if he'd endured some ordeal. "Gwynneth, this is Thorneton Neville, Baron Neville of Wycliffe."

Thorne bowed. "I'm most honored, Miss Stowington."

Gold-dusted eyelashes fell on persimmon cheeks in a Devonshire-cream complexion. Long, strawberry-gold hair rippled forward as Gwynneth Stowington felled her green-velvet hood and executed a flawless curtsey. "My lord."