The Stanforth Secrets (34 page)

Matthew was hovering, still looking pale. Justin told him to make himself scarce, and he looked relieved to do so.

Chloe informed them of what Matthew had said. “I told him he could stay,” she admitted.

“Your word is law here, my love,” said Justin with a smile which melted her bones. “Since we are letting two true villains go, it hardly seems right to wreak our vengeance on the little fish.”

“What about the Dutchman?” Chloe asked.

Justin shrugged. “The same thing. Once he realizes the game is up, he’ll disappear. Just as long as he doesn’t get wind of our success soon enough to make an attempt on the papers. Can we trust Matthew? There may be other French agents about.”

Chloe looked at him, chilled by fear. Was it not over? “I am sure we can trust Matthew. He doesn’t even know yet what was really going on, or that Macy has been caught.”

Justin smiled reassuringly. “It is best if we move fast, though. Macy can wait locked in his room. By the way, I put his man in there with him, with a tray of food. I suspect the valet is innocent, but there is no way to be sure. I don’t want him raising an alarm just yet. Randal and I will ride to Lancaster after breakfast, then it will be over.”

“I will come too,” said Chloe decisively.

“No,” responded Justin calmly.

“I will go mad sitting here worrying,” she protested.

“ ‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’ ” he quoted. “I don’t want to have to worry about you as well as the papers.”

Chloe saw Randal was looking at the ceiling, pursing his lips as if silently whistling.

“You said,” she pointed out to Justin, “that my word was law.”

“Within the house,” he reminded her, amiably firm. “Our little journey will take us out of it. I am not going to be a dictatorial husband, Chloe, but I can’t let your whims interfere with the safety of the nation.”

He was like a brick wall. Chloe stared, not sure if she liked this at all. “I haven’t said yet that I’ll marry you.”

He grinned. “I’ll tell the world you entertained me in your bedroom. Randal will force me to marry you.”

Randal ceased his perusal of the plasterwork. “True enough.”

Chloe looked at both of them with disfavor. “You still haven’t told me how you came to interrupt Macy at his work.”

Randal grinned. Justin looked less than comfortable, and didn’t immediately answer.

Chloe looked at Randal, much easier to handle than Justin. “Well?” she demanded.

“He crept into my room,” said Randal, “ready to murder me and . . . well, I’m not sure what he intended to do with you.”

“With me? In your room?”

“In my bed.”

Chloe turned stern eyes on Justin. He had a most uneasy expression.

“I heard someone in the corridor,” he explained. “I opened my door, and I could smell your perfume. Then I heard a voice somewhere ahead. I just leapt to a conclusion. You and Randal. The only reason I didn’t charge into Randal’s room howling like a banshee was that I had some notion of preserving your reputation. As soon as I was in the room it was clear you weren’t there. Randal woke and I had to confess the whole bloody stupidity. After he’d torn a strip or two off me, and I’d wallowed in guilt, we got around to thinking about where you had been going, and who you had been speaking to. When we got to the Dowager’s room, we heard Macy howl. We burst in, and there you were.”

Chloe looked at him thoughtfully. He was so uncomfortable about his suspicions that she wanted to hold him and tell him it didn’t matter in the slightest. However, she was not sure it would be wise to let him off so easily, when he showed every sign of becoming a tyrant.

“I do hope you are not claiming to have rescued me,” she said sweetly.

Justin looked taken aback, and then grinned. “I suppose you did rescue yourself, and fixed Macy nicely. I am sorry for doubting you for a moment, my dear. When we return from Lancaster, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving just how highly I regard you.”

“But you won’t let me come with you,” she said.

“No.”

He and Randal rose to go. Chloe maintained an implacable silence until Justin turned at the door.

“God go with you,” she said softly.

C
HLOE SAT IN HER SITTING ROOM at Tyne Towers in Shropshire and reread her latest love letter. Randal must have told him. Nearly every day of the four weeks since they’d parted a letter had come for her. Some she had been able to share with her grandmother. Most she had not.

Today was her wedding day, and this was not a letter to show to anyone:
“The memory of your beauty is with me day and night, especially at night. I dream you are beside me and my hand is on your silken thigh . . .”

She wished she had been able to write to him in the same vein, but it wasn’t in her to do so. For a Scandalous Lady, she was rather shy. Her letters had been sweet and loving. She thought of the night ahead. Would her sweet loving be enough for the passion built over six long years?

He had wanted a quick wedding, but had accepted her need for a formal one. He had also wanted her to stay at Delamere, but had accepted the necessity of separation. Some kind of control in him had snapped and could not be made completely whole again.

The Duchess came in.

“Another one?” she queried. “Lord above, girl. I’m in favor of letter-writing but you two will wear out the mails.”

“Not after today,” said Chloe with a smile.

“True enough,” said the Duchess. “Though it’s no bad thing to write love letters even after you’re married.” A gently reminiscent smile made Chloe think the Duchess’s correspondence would make interesting reading.

“Well,” said the Duchess. “It’s time you were preparing, unless you’ve changed your mind. You’ve done me out of seeing you take London by storm, so I’d be happy enough if you’d jilt the man and start again.”

Chloe looked at the Duchess. “Truly?”

The Duchess laughed. “No, of course not. He’s the man for you, my dear. Perhaps I’ll live to see your daughter wreak havoc.”

“I do hope so,” said Chloe. “Meanwhile, however, I would point out that Randal does enough damage for three.”

Chloe rose and rang her bell. Agnes came, accompanied by Chloe’s two attendants—her only unmarried sister, shy Cressida, and pretty, vivacious Lady Sophie Kyle, whose flaming auburn hair and blue eyes seemed to sparkle as she darted about. She was the sister of Lord Wraybourne, one of the Duke of Tyne’s closest aristocratic neighbors. Lady Sophie was sixteen to Cressida’s twenty, and yet she seemed to have far more aplomb.

Soon Chloe was dressed in the pale pink gown she had chosen for her wedding. It was high at the neck, and long sleeved but made of layers of finest diaphanous silk gauze which floated gently as she moved. In her unbound hair, Agnes arranged matching silk roses as a tiara. A delicate necklace of rubies and diamonds glittered around her throat. Matching drops dangled from her earlobes. Justin’s gift, matching the betrothal ring she wore on her hand.

She went down the stairs with her attendants and put on the warm cloak lined with chinchilla, which was Randal’s outrageous bride-gift to her, especially outrageous in view of the note accompanying it:
“I recommend, sweet coz, that sometime you wear this, and nothing else, to bed.”
Even now, Chloe knew she was blushing at the thought, and that part of the heat was anticipation, not embarrassment.

Accompanied by her dignified father and the two bridesmaids, she went out to the coach and off to her wedding.

It was a quiet affair, attended only by family and friends, both by choice and because of the expected death of Princess Amelia. The latter had, as anticipated, plunged the King into terminal madness.

Justin smiled as she walked down the aisle toward him. He held out his hand and she placed hers within it. There was no awkwardness or nervousness in either of them. Everything was so completely right, she thought. Even Stephen was doubtless approving.

Afterward they rode back together to the Towers, but not alone. The bridesmaids rode in the coach. Cressida was tongue-tied as usual, but not Lady Sophie.

“A wedding, and to be out of school two weeks early for Christmas! I can’t believe what luck.” She smiled at Chloe. “I can’t wait to be married myself. Sometimes it seems I will be looked upon as a child forever. I intend to have a Season as soon as may be, because then gentlemen will
have
to take me seriously.”

Chloe saw Justin’s lips twitch, and leaned against his shoulder. Sophie reminded her of herself six years ago, but happier. The girl’s father was dead, and Chloe had not met her mother. Sophie’s brother, however, the new Lord Wraybourne, seemed to be an excellent guardian, loving but firm. She doubted Lady Sophie would be tempted to a runaway match. She would doubtless be a handful, though, for some man some day.

“Do you have admirers yet, Lady Sophie?” asked Chloe idly.

“Dozens,” said the minx, probably truthfully. She was very pretty. “But I have set my sights high. When I marry, it will be to the most handsome, most marvelous man in the world.”

Chloe looked up at Justin. “He’s already taken, Lady Sophie,” she said softly.

They had arrived at the Towers, and they climbed down. Chloe was glad of her cloak, for a cold wind whipped across the courtyard. She didn’t care, however, about the season for her wedding. It was done, that was all.

She looked up at Justin and he smiled. His hands slid around her beneath the fur, and he drew her into his arms for a kiss of total passion. She felt his body against hers, and the warmth of his skin was a foil for the cold air. Knowing there were watching eyes, however, Chloe struggled free.

Justin released her and kissed her hand. “Tonight,” he said meaningfully.

“In the Duchess’s bedroom after dinner?” retorted Chloe with a wicked smile.

He laughed out loud and kissed her again, but quickly.

“Inflammatory games being the order of the day . . . or night,” he added, then tore his gaze away. More carriages were pulling up to the Towers.

He looked around for their attendants, who were tactfully studying a stone griffin. Cressida’s face was flaming red. Lady Sophie was merely amused. For a moment she looked older and wiser than she should be, but then she was all child again.

“Come along, do. It’s freezing out here, and there’s Monsieur Fraquette’s special lemon tarts, Devonshire syllabub, and
puits d’amour
as well!”

Laughing, Chloe and Justin followed the young ladies into the warmth of the great house.

T
HE STANFORTH SECRETS is set in my corner of England—North Lancashire. I was born at home in a room overlooking Morecambe Bay, and grew up in the same house. Like Chloe in this book, I spent many hours watching the sea, the birds, and the ever-changing sky. This wasn’t exactly the same view, however, for this book is set in the ancient village of Heysham (pronounced Heesham—the natives insist on it), a few miles down the coast from my hometown of Morecambe (pronounced
Morcome
).

In fact, Morecambe didn’t exist in 1810. It was still the village of Poulton. It only grew, and received its name, during the holiday-making boom of the Victorian era. It is now a typical English seaside town, but a block from my old home there is Poulton Square, the old center of the village, which has on one side the New Inn dating back to the eighteenth century.

The historical details of Heysham are correct. There is a ruined chapel, said to have been built by St. Patrick, and a 1,200-year-old church—St. Peter’s—which is still in use. The church is surrounded by a beautiful graveyard that overlooks the sea and a hogback stone was dug up there in 1800. When I was a child the stone was in the churchyard, and we children, knowing no reverence for antiquity, would sometimes climb on it. It was moved not long ago into the church for protection from the elements—and perhaps from little monsters.

Heysham is a charming and fascinating place. If you find yourself in North Lancashire, perhaps on your way to the Lake District, do try to visit there.

Apart from Lord Liverpool and the Duke of York, the people who appear in the book, and the homes they live in, are totally my own invention. There never was a Delamere Hall or a Troughton House. Chloe and Justin, Randal and the Duchess and all the other characters live only in my imagination.

And now, I hope, in yours.

 

Jo Beverley Ottawa, Canada

Dear Readers,

 

 

 

 

I hope you are enjoying these reissues of my traditional Regency romances.

I wrote six such books in the early days of my career, and they’ve now become expensive and hard to find, so I’m delighted that NAL is reissuing them, and with such lovely covers, too. Two of the novels came out in 2008 in a single volume called
Lovers and Ladies
. For complicated reasons those were the last two books,
The Fortune Hunter
and
Deirdre and Don Juan
. The remaining four are coming out in sequence.