And he resolutely refused to wed or even think of marrying any of the young women thrown at him as the holder of an illustrious and ancient title. Those young ladies were steeped in artificiality, he told Mary. They were cold and frivolous, heartless and soulless. They were stupid or vicious or inane. He had never met one who could bear him, nor could he stand to think of any one of them as a wife.
Mary looked down at the sleeping baby in her arms, thankful once again that she had at least the child to remember her husband. Gerry should have that, a wife he could love, children. He would make an ideal husband and father, for beneath the hard, handsome exterior—whether he knew it or not the viscount was a fearsome sight when in a towering rage, every inch the austere, callous lord of the manor—was a heart as soft as a cream puff.
Take this cottage; her snug abode should belong to the new manager of the Haven home farm, but Gerry would not toss her and Molly out of her marital home after Jem’s death. Instead he had built a more modern cottage with larger barns for the new manager. She was grateful, for though the cottage was isolated it was her home and had been for the seven years of her marriage. Lonely it might be at times, but it held all of the fond memories she had of her husband and their life together and she could not let go of that yet.
She knew the townsfolk were talking. It was thought strange that Lord Haven let her stay in the remote cottage even though she had no right to it now and did not work for his lordship. Her daughter had been born a long seven months after Jem had died, and she knew there would be those who would look askance if they knew the frequency with which Gerry ate his dinner at the cottage. The only reason people did not know was the relative isolation of her snug home. It was nestled in a valley among the moorland hills that undulated across the county, and she seldom saw a soul other than Gerry for weeks at a time. She spent her days tending her garden, spinning wool and caring for her baby. If they knew the many nights he stopped at her cottage for dinner, spending hours sometimes by her fireside, there would be whispers and pointing fingers. But she could not turn away her friend, not when his heart was as sore and lonely as she knew it to be.
It all came down to the same thing in the end. Gerry needed a wife, and it would never be her. There was a chasm between them of class and education and interest. And besides, the only emotion she felt toward him was a warm friendship, as if he was the brother she had never had. And he didn’t really love her. He mistook the warmth of their friendship, the ease of companionship, for love, which was only possible because he had never been in love before, never known the sweet madness of the soul that overtook a man in love.
There was a sound outside and she looked up, alarmed. The wind was up, whistling around the cottage like a spirit in turmoil. The old ones would call it a “thin” or “lazy” wind, a wind that cut right through you, being too lazy to go around. The bang was repeated and she hastily pulled her dress up over her shoulder and carried the baby to her cradle. Pulling a shawl over her shoulders, she headed out the door. It must be that pesky barn door again! She had meant to tell Gerry about it, but had been distracted by his unwelcome advances and had forgotten to tell him that the latch was broken.
The wind was whipping up and the tree near the well was bending almost to the ground. She pulled the shawl closer about her shoulders and hastened across the damp yard, struggling against the blast of wind that stormed up over the moor. A fine, misty rain was coming down again, cold on this March evening. Before she even made it to the barn it had turned into a drizzle. The snow had just disappeared, but now with this needle-sharp rain pelting down it felt just as cold as January.
Through the darkness she bustled and grabbed the swinging door to pull it shut, but thought she should really check on Esther, the aging milk cow, before going back to the warmth of the cottage. The rain could have blown in on the poor beast and she could not bear to go back in if she thought Esther was cold and wet.
Poor old girl, Mary thought, patting the bovine flank. But no, she was not wet, nor did she seem anything but the contented, so . . . wait, what was that?
A noise in the corner of the tiny barn drew Mary’s attention. There was movement, and she wondered if Lally, the very pregnant barn cat, was ready to bear her litter. Letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, she crept to the corner that the noise had come from and gazed over the wood barrier into the empty stall that had used to belong to Jem’s old nag.
And there, shivering in the corner of the stall was . . . a girl. Or rather, a young woman, dressed in the garb of a serving girl or kitchen maid. And . . . oh, my, Mary thought. Her clothes were torn and she was weeping.
Chapter Two
“Haven, what are you going to do?” Rachel put her fists on her slim hips and stared down at her brother, tapping her slipper-shod foot on the floor.
“Yes, Haven, what are you going to do?” Lady Haven joined in with her daughter’s harangue as her son, back from a long night and day of searching for his missing bride-to-be, wearily dropped into a deep leather chair in the study. “Lady Mortimer is beside herself! It has been almost a full day and still you have not found the girl! What have you been doing?”
“Yes, what have you been doing instead of finding poor Miss Dresden? Out hobnobbing with the hired help again?” Rachel said, a nasty expression on her pretty face.
“Leave him alone, Rach. He’s dead tired.” Pamela, a pixie-like girl of nineteen with brown hair she persisted in calling “dung-colored,” followed her sister and mother into the book-lined, wood-paneled room. She moved around behind her brother’s chair and massaged his shoulders as she chastised her sister. But she said not a word to her mother.
“It’s all right, Pammy,” Haven said, running a hand through his thick sandy hair and using the other hand to cover his youngest sister’s where it rested on his shoulder. He had thought a retreat to the library in order the minute he came into the house, but it was not to be a sanctuary. He was doomed to have the women in his family follow him even into his den to torment him.
“Do not use such low language, young lady,” Lady Haven said, waggling her finger at Pamela. “‘Dead tired’ is an abominable colloquialism. And do not be so familiar with your brother.” She reached out to smack her youngest daughter’s hand, but since it was snatched back quickly from Haven’s shoulder, the blow struck the viscount instead. His jawline firmed, but he said nothing.
Rachel, a young lady who normally exhibited exceptionally correct behavior, stuck her tongue out at her younger sister as Pamela clutched her hands, rough from riding without gloves, behind her back.
“Rachel,” Lady Haven snapped, catching sight of that extremely unladylike expression of dislike from sister to sister. “If you are to be a role model for Pamela you must not behave like a hoyden; you are three-and-twenty, not nine. Have I not raised you better?”
“No, you have not, Margaret, you have spoiled them terribly.” The new voice was that of the ancient and terrifying Dowager Lady Haven, the eighty-year-old matriarch. She moved into the room, stiffly upright despite her use of a cane. “Ever since my son died they have had no discipline at all. Since long before he died, I should amend, since he was little better than a cat’s-paw. In my day they would have been wedded and bedded five years ago and have babies by now. And before that they would have been in the schoolroom with a backboard strapped to them for twelve hours out of the day. Rudeness would have been treated with a switch on the backside.”
Lady Margaret Haven said stiffly, “This is a new age and a new century. We do not treat our children like slaves.”
“No, you raise wretched little heathens, no better than snorting piglets rooting in a garbage heap.”
Haven sank deeper and deeper into the buttery soft leather of the chair, letting their voices seethe and bubble around him like the hissing and chuckling of a boiling cauldron. Women! He was plagued and beleaguered by women! And how they could talk, without ceasing, sometimes, without even breathing. At times it seemed to him tha
t they just liked to hear the sounds of their own voices endlessly.
He rubbed his tired eyes as Rachel and Pamela joined in the squabble, one on his mother’s side and the other on his grandmother’s side. It had been such a long night and day, almost twenty-four hours of ceaseless movement, riding and walking and searching. Miss Jane Dresden, for all he could find out, had descended the back stairs of the Tippling Swan in Lesleydale into oblivion. She had disappeared not only without a trace, but without a sound or sight from any living creature. He had questioned. He had badgered. He had annoyed, harassed, interrogated and bullied everyone in the village and on the outlying farms in a radius of three or four miles, but no one had seen her, nor had they seen any men unknown to them.
Who would have kidnapped a girl of obvious quality from an inn? He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and shut out the rising voices around him. Where was she? The landlord of the Swan swore that she never did arrive in the kitchen on her supposed errand for hot water. Somewhere, then, on the journey from the upstairs bedchamber to the kitchen at the back of the inn, she had been taken. Accosted, presumably, by the villains who had seized her.
The thought of any female alone and frightened, held captive and possibly unspeakably tormented by brutal men, launched him out of his chair again. This was his domain, Lesleydale and all of the outlying farms and properties, and no woman should have cause for fear in his part of Yorkshire. Silence fell among his distaff relatives and various shades of blue and green eyes stared at him.
“I am going out again. I swore I would find Miss Dresden and I will.” He didn’t even recognize his own voice, so hard and sharp it was. It echoed off the green-painted walls and almost rattled the wood paneling.
The ancient dowager nodded brusquely and rapped her cane on the marble floor. “We know you will, Haven. We have no doubt in the world of that.”
“Well, I do.” Lady Mortimer, speaking up from the doorway, glared at the viscount, dark brown eyes snapping with anger. “It is a proof of the laxity of his lordship that there are the kind of brutal cutpurses in the neighborhood that would do such a deed, feeling themselves safe from capture!”
“Do not say that about Haven,” Pamela cried, ever on the defense where her adored older brother was concerned. “He is a good landlord and well respected around here. It’s not his fault if some dastardly hedge-birds followed you from London and nabbed that addle-pated nodcock of a niece of yours!”
Lady Haven groaned and rushed to Pamela, smacking her on the back of the head while Lady Mortimer moaned and dropped into a chair. “What did I tell you about that hideous cant you picked up in London?” Lady Haven screamed. “And how could you insult our guest—Ellen, Ellen!” Lady Haven shrieked out the door to a maid passing by. “Get the smelling salts again. Lady Mortimer is overset.”
“Not overset,” Pamela grumbled. “Dicked in the nob, if you ask me.”
Haven, struggling to hide a smile, gave Pamela, his favorite sister, a sympathetic look and a shrug. His amusement died in the face of the certainty that Lady Mortimer had a right to her resentment. He strode out of the room, tossing back over his shoulder, “I will find her. I said I would and I will.”
• • •
Mary, sitting in the settle by the hearth with Molly on her lap, gazed worriedly at the bed in the corner. The girl had slept all through the night, waking just once during the day, briefly. If only Gerry were there! She didn’t know what to do. If the girl was sick she should see at least the apothecary, but that would necessitate Mary getting dressed against the cold spell that had swept over the moors and getting the baby bundled up—she could not leave Molly alone with a sick girl, certainly—and walking the four or five miles over the hills to Betty and James Johnson’s farm, the new home farm. She would have to do it, she supposed, if Haven did not drop by sometime within the next hours.
But just as she came to that conclusion the girl stirred, opened her eyes, and struggled to sit up.
Mary watched her carefully. “Are you all right, miss?” The girl was clearly of some quality—her looks and fair skin and soft hands denoted that—and yet her clothing was that of a serving wench or kitchen maid. And her dress had been torn at the bosom, with the bottom ragged and much of the skirt muddy. Mary vacillated between being sure the girl was of the gentry, at least, to thinking she was perhaps just a maid who had more presence and beauty than others.
“Where am I?”
Her voice was clear and well-modulated. Gentry, Mary decided. No matter what the clothes looked like, this girl must be of the gentry. Perhaps down on her luck, or deserted, mayhap?
“You’re in my cottage on the moors, miss. I’m Mary Cooper, a widow, and this is my baby, Molly.” She held up her little girl—Molly cooed happily and giggled, waving chubby wee fists in the air—and watched the young woman’s eyes light up as if candles had been lit behind the gray orbs.
“Oh,” she breathed on a sigh. “She’s precious!” She moved to sit on the edge of the bed and a smile touched her lips, curving them upward in a bow, but the movement was too hasty. She put one hand to her head and closed her eyes for a moment, but if she was faint, it passed quickly. She took a deep breath and looked up again.
“You haven’t eaten, likely not in a day or more, miss. Will you take some broth from the mutton stew? It’s nourishing, but won’t be hard to take down if you’re still not in decent fettle.” Mary, as the girl nodded, shifted Molly to her hip and got up to fill an earthenware mug with the steaming thickened broth. She brought it over to the bed and handed it to the girl, noting the pale, soft hands, free of calluses. Who was she? And what was she doing in the barn? She had so many questions but the girl looked weak still, and Mary did not want to keep her from her nourishing meal.
But surely her name would be a start. “What is yer name, miss?” Mary asked, sitting back down on the settle by the fire. She moved Molly to her lap again, and the baby coughed once and sneezed, rubbing her tiny nose with one pink fist.
Her gray eyes wide and startled, the young woman stopped drinking and bit her lip. “My n-name?”
“Yes,” Mary said patiently, wiping her daughter’s nose with a cloth. “Yer name. Drink up, though, miss. It’ll warm yer insides.”
The girl took another sip. Her gray eyes watchful, she said hesitantly, “My n-name is . . . is Jenny.”
“Same name as me young cousin!” Mary said with a reassuring smile. Why the girl was so afraid of divulging her name Mary could not imagine, but perhaps she had her reasons. Or it could be that the hesitation was just the lingering effects of her ordeal. “She’s a lady’s maid in London, is me Jenny. Finish yer broth, then, Jenny—if’n you don’t mind me callin’ you that—and then get back under the covers.” Molly yawned hugely and Mary decided her little one needed some sleep too. She put her in the cradle and pulled the soft hand-knit coverlet up over her. She then moved to stand beside the bed and gazed down at her new charge.
“You’re so kind,” the young woman murmured, finishing the last drops of the broth and putting the mug in Mary’s outstretched hand. She gazed around the cottage with avid eyes. “What a lovely home you have,” she said, snuggling under the covers and pulling them up over her shift. With a start, she looked down at her underclothes, but she did not seem shy at all. Her eyes touched on her dress hanging clean and drying near the fire. Mary had repaired the rip at the bosom with her neat stitches and no one would be able to notice unless they were closer than they ought to be.
Mary watched her for a moment. Lady’s maid or lady; which was she? She could just ask, but it was enough for now that Jenny seemed to be healthy, if still tired. There would be time later to settle the mystery of who she was and how she came to be in Mary’s barn in the middle of the night. “Thank you fer the compliment,” Mary replied, gazing around her snug cottage. “Molly and I like it.”
“May I hold her, your baby?” the young woman murmured.
“When you awaken again,” Mary said, smiling
as she watched the gray eyes drifting closed.
“But I am not in the least bit sleep—”
• • •
In the same dream she had been having for ten years or more now, Jane dreamed of arms around her, holding her close. She relaxed back and felt the hard wall of a man’s broad, sturdy chest. She was cradled in warmth and love and security, and a deep voice murmured comforting words of devotion. His breath was warm and tickled her ear, but instead of giggling she was inclined to surrender to the rising desire to turn over and kiss the lips that would be waiting for her, wanting her.
In a moment, she thought hazily. There would be time for that in a moment. She was in a little cottage again, only usually all she could see was the fireplace. This time she could see the smoke-stained stone walls, the bare wood rafters hung with bunches of herbs and dried flowers, the scarred wooden table and chairs near the window, and she noted the rush baskets full of apples and the strings of dried fruit. She could smell the smoke of the fire and the rich scent of mutton stew, and clothes drying near the hearth. The mantel held pewter candlesticks and there was a settle near the fire made of stripped willow branches, a settle made for two, covered in a handmade quilt of simple pattern. And a cradle fashioned by hand, with a baby in it on the stone hearth.
She awoke with a start. A . . . a baby?
It was dark and she was disoriented at first, but then she remembered a plump, pink-cheeked woman named Mary, enough like her in many ways to be her own sister, and a rosy baby named Molly, and a delicious cup of broth flecked with herbs, rosemary and thyme and wild savory. Propping herself up on one elbow she saw, by the dying glow of the fire, the woman, Mary, asleep sitting up, her hand in her cheek. The cradle was near the hearth at her knee.
This place felt strangely like home. Jane relaxed back, happy now that she knew where she was. It was as if she had dreamed this place, this cottage and this life, into existence, it was so much the life she had imagined as she lived her stuffy existence in London and then Bath. Every detail of the cottage—the clean scent of linens drying by the hearth, the heavy, hand-hewn rafters and the homey woven rag rugs on the floor—seemed precious and perfect.
Lord Haven's Deception Page 3