Lady Skerrit had decorated the Great Hall with dozens of flowers. She must have stripped the hothouses of every house in the district, and the result took my breath away. Floral scents filled the hall, and the dark timbers were brilliant with colour.
I had had no idea she had planned this and the result filled me with delight. I moved forward to get a better view and gazed up at the ceiling, glancing back at Richard to see if he appreciated it too.
But he wasn’t looking at the hall, and he wasn’t smiling. He had seen something I had not, and the sight froze his face into its usual mask of polite indifference.
I went back to stand by his side, realising we could not be without company as I had supposed, and then I saw the people I had missed.
Mrs. Terry and her daughter, both in unrelieved black, stood by the door, waiting for us to acknowledge them.
Eustacia Terry had been the bane of my life, laughing at me when I sat by the wall at the various gatherings we attended, making my spinster role doubly difficult. An only child, her parents had very much indulged her but the brutality of her father’s recent behaviour had forced me to think again. Hers must have been a very troubled household. I still couldn’t like her, it was too late for that but I could understand more of what had made her what she was, and why she craved the attention of her peers.
Richard disliked Miss Terry as much as I did but for different reasons. She had accidentally eavesdropped on a quiet moment Richard and I had snatched at Exeter Assembly rooms, and heard things she had no right to hear. My beloved had a profound hatred of anyone entering his own intimate world to which he only allowed access to me and his twin brother. He had lost his temper on that occasion and spoken to her with cruelty but at my plea, he’d left the rest of his planned revenge alone.
Because of that eavesdropping, the surviving Terrys knew Richard and I had a love match, not a joining of families, or a convenient linking of friendship, as the world at large assumed ours to be.
The ladies curtseyed, and we returned the courtesy, Richard’s bow so elaborate it touched on mockery.
“My lord, Rose—Lady Strang, I mean of course.” I knew Mrs. Terry’s slip was deliberate. In subsequent conversations, I would miraculously become ‘my dearest friend Lady Strang,’ and so I discovered another reason to be glad I was leaving.
“For obvious reasons we could not accept your kind invitation to the wedding—” Had we invited them? I suppose Martha had done so “—but we had to give you our congratulations, so we took the liberty of coming over early, in the hope of catching you before your other guests arrive.”
Richard bowed, with the polite, humourless smile I never saw when he looked at me.
“It’s very kind of you,” I said, “especially considering your recent loss.”
I watched them, certain I could see they had no idea of our part in Mr.Terry’s recent “accident”. Their faces remained grave for a short time, and then brightened considerably as they looked around the room.
Eustacia’s face sobered once more. She took in the tables laid for the meal, the decorations, all the preparations for all the people she had always dreamed of meeting. Then she turned back to me, and absorbed the unusual grandeur of my appearance, her eyes widening when she came to my jewellery. “I must say, Rose, you make a very good viscountess.”
I smiled at this, the very first compliment she’d ever paid me, and I savoured the sweetness. Richard took my hand to his lips. “I never doubted it.”
That made me laugh, especially when I remembered the circumstances of our first meetings, with the dowdy clothes I wore, and then the sombre mourning. “How can you, sir. You know I wasn’t at my best when we met. You must have been dreaming of someone else.”
“Oh, I was dreaming, but I’ll spare your blushes, my lady.” He didn’t spare them, but the sound of my new title on his lips sounded much better, almost right. Since the Terrys knew what we felt for each other, concealment would be pointless. I was glad to see he could open up, even this far.
I turned back to our sombrely dressed visitors. “I’ll be coming back here from time to time, of course.”
“Naturally you will wish to see your brother and his family,” said Mrs. Terry smoothly, seemingly unmoved by my husband’s demonstration of his affection. “But dear Lady Hareton has invited us to town this autumn, when we shall be out of mourning.”
I felt the gentle pressure of Richard’s hand on my own, and I knew as well as if he’d said it what he was thinking. “We can’t promise to be present ourselves, ma’am, but if we are available we would be glad to see you.”
“I’m not sure where we’ll be in the autumn,” Richard added, and I knew a secret thrill when he referred to us as a couple. I relished the sensation. “Though if you think you should like it, my lady, I think we should go. You have to be presented at Court, and that’s as good a time as any.”
My heart quaked at the thought of another ordeal. He watched me, and I knew he saw my expression of dismay although I tried to hide it, and laughed a little. “You’ll sail through it. The most difficult part, I’m told, is walking backwards in a gown with a huge hoop and a train. My sister must have performed it satisfactorily, so perhaps we should ask her to teach you.”
“I wouldn’t like to put her to so much trouble,” I protested.
“She’ll love it. She’s ten years younger than Gervase and me, and it would give her great pleasure to instruct instead of being instructed for a change.”
I smiled, accepting his reassurance. After all, autumn was a long way away.
The Terrys took their leave, expressing their hope that they would see us in the autumn.
Carier came forward from the shadows and ushered us upstairs to a bedroom, where reposed two glasses of wine and our dressing cases. “If you would permit me to attend you, my lady, I think I can repair any ravages the journey may have wrought.”
I accepted the seat at the dressing table and the resourceful valet attended to me, while Richard took his ease and watched as his man restored me to my appearance when I left the house that morning. He eradicated all the traces of my sleep in the carriage. Carier’s fingers positively flew as he repaired the damage to my hair. “I’m sorry for the haste, my lady, but your guests will arrive at any moment.”
“Shame,” said Richard. I felt the same way he did. I would have enjoyed a respite. If not for the Terrys, we might have had longer.
Then Richard sat at the dressing table and I sipped my wine as Carier attended to his master, swiftly and skilfully restoring him to bandbox freshness.
It didn’t take long, thanks to his skill, and although we would both have liked to linger in the quiet, comfortable room, we had to continue with the ceremony of the day.
We stood at the door of the Great Hall to greet the people who passed through it, and I had plenty of time to practise my new curtsey. The depth of the curtsey depended on my rank and the relative rank of the person I was curtseying to. Although Lizzie had made me practice the day before, I still found it hard to remember but everyone seemed satisfied, from the Duke of This to plain Mr That. We greeted them as they arrived, because to wait until they had arranged themselves into their respective ranks was more than we could bear. No one took offence, so a mere half-hour after we stationed ourselves at the door, hearing the same sentiments repeated with varying degrees of sincerity, the Skerrits came through it.
All thoughts of courtesy dissolved when I saw my childhood friend and my fellow sufferer of the previous week, and I embraced him warmly, not caring what anyone thought, because Richard knew the right of it. I was glad to see Tom looking so well, back on his feet again after his severe beating of the previous week. “Are you feeling quite well now, Tom?”
“Almost back to my old self.” His jaunty reply didn’t conceal the melancholy expression in his eyes. “And you look marvellous, every inch the great lady.”
“Tom, I never knew you to flatter before!”
“Perhaps she’ll believe it from you,” Richard observed, “Since I don’t seem to be able to persuade her.”
Lady Skerrit made a clucking sound. “Indeed, my dear, one would never know you spent half your childhood scrambling up trees!” An exaggeration, but an understandable one, considering how often her staff had found Tom and me in her orchard. Richard gave me an unholy smile, and I suspected he would ask me to demonstrate my tree climbing ability one day.
The Skerrits passed on and I felt as though I’d said goodbye to another part of my life. I’d already asked them to visit us. Tom was almost a brother to me after our recent experiences. I knew I would never be able to cross the fields to their woods again as I had so many times over the years. That was where our nightmare had begun, and I knew I could never bear to go back.
The great hall filled to overflowing, hardly room for all our guests at the tables. At Richard’s suggestion, every guest but the high sticklers had someone they hadn’t met before to sit with, our local Devonshire society mingling with the London grandees.
True to her husband’s ancestors, Lady Skerritt had a large table at the head of the hall, where we would sit and filled the rest of the space under that wonderful hammerbeam roof with two large dining tables on either side.
She had borrowed all the silver and dinner services in the district, and the resulting display did us proud. Everything was polished to within an inch of its life, and the company now set it off to perfection.
Toasts were made, healths drunk, and I took care not to imbibe too much, mindful of my lack of sleep and the hours yet to go, but I drank deeply once.
When the toasts were drunk and the food was being brought in, Richard turned to me and raised his glass. “To your beautiful brown eyes. May I drown in them forever.” It had become his usual toast to me, normally only said in private, but here, although quietly spoken, he made no attempt to hide it from our immediate neighbours.
I raised my glass in turn and toasted him, only substituting “blue” for “brown,” but otherwise using the same words. He watched me drain my glass, and signed for it to be refilled but kept his attention on me, in a pledge only partly expressed by the toast.
He made sure I ate and a short time after, took my hand. “Are you feeling quite the thing, my dear?”
I almost laughed, which wasn’t the effect he wanted. Instead I put my hand over my mouth and then to my forehead. He rose and helped me to my feet, giving me his arm to lean on, and we left the room.
Although the formalities of the occasion were now relaxed, most of the company watched us leave. I couldn’t hear any comments as I passed the tables, but I could guess at some of the speculations.
He took me straight outside, to the carriage we arrived in and helped me in. “I’ve left notes to thank our hosts, and to explain to our families,” he explained, as with a jerk the vehicle began to move. “The people who matter to us most know what I planned, and they will say you’ve had a relapse from your illness of last week, so I’m taking you away to rest.” He leaned back, smiling at me, society attitude gone.
I laughed. “Do you think of everything?”
A gleam of amusement lit his eyes. “I try. Carier and Nichols will join us on the yacht, if they’re not there already. Our luggage was stowed aboard yesterday.”
“And I haven’t even seen it yet,” I reminded him, still smiling.
“No, but I have hopes you’ll find it to your liking.”
“What if I don’t?”
He moved with a whisper of heavy silk, and took me in his arms. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? I have so much to show you—so much…”
Just before his mouth reached mine I heard a loud report, and then another, and a searing pain lanced the side of my head, just above my ear. |
