Jane glanced guiltily sideways at Mary, who was coloring, just as she was. Now she was placing Mary in the position that she must lie further to her friend; it was unconscionable! Gerry must wonder why such an innocuous question should raise such blushes. She had to escape. Coward that she was, she could not listen to her new friend forced to lie for her. “Mary, I just realized that we are not going to have enough water for morning. I will go draw some more and then we can put on some tea.”
“I’ll come with you and help, Miss Jenny. I’ll carry the pail,” Gerry said, jumping up.
“No,” Jane said firmly, putting her hand on his shoulder and pushing him back down. Alone, with him, out in the dark? It was not a good idea at all, not when her lips still had the tender remembrance of his kisses lingering on them from the day before. “You’ve not had much time lately to visit with Mary. Please, just sit and I’ll return in a few moments. Please,” she added, seeing the hesitation on his face. “Let me do what little I can to help my . . . my c-cousin.”
Gerry let it go this once, though his chivalric response was to accompany her. He watched her pick up the pail and head out the door, closing it softly behind her. It was tempting to follow, because stealing a kiss in the moonlight would delight his soul at that moment. He was agitated and he wasn’t quite sure why. His grandmother’s words rang in his ears. Ask her to marry you. He had stared at her in amazement, because he had been just about to tell her that was what he was going to do and she stole his thunder. He was going to tell her that he would brook no interference in his life any longer, that he was going to marry where his heart was engaged. And then she said it so simply. Marry Jenny. She had even gone so far as to say she thought he would get no interference from his family once they met Jenny. Puzzling, especially when one considered that his Grand had not even met the girl herself. How did she know? She had only his word for it that Jenny’s manners would never raise a blush of shame in or out of the family circle.
And yet there was a ways to go, confessions to make, before he could ask. Perhaps that was what was bothering him, the knowledge that he had yet to unburden himself to Jenny. He turned his attention back to Mary. She looked worried. He reached up and took her hand. “Mary, what’s wrong?”
She hesitated, but then said, “Gerry, I am that worrit about yer . . . about yer preference for Jenny.”
“That is not your concern, Mary, but I know that her being family, it’s natural that you should worry. Be comforted. My intentions toward your cousin are honorable. I—” He took a deep breath, squeezed his friend’s hand and then said, “Mary, I want to ask her to marry me.”
He heard the swift intake of breath and he stared into her eyes. “What is it?”
“Ya can’t, oh, Gerry, ya can’t, really, you must not.”
“I know there will be some difficulty. I have yet to tell her who I really am, after all, and I know that will be a shock to her. But I have Grand’s approval, and—”
“It’s not that, Gerry . . . oh, I swore I wouldn’t tell ye, but now I feel I must. Oh, Lord, what shall I do?”
“What is it, Mary, is she . . . ?” A dreadful thought crossed his mind. “She’s not married already, is she?”
“No . . . no, I don’t think so, but I don’t know, really. Gerry—”
Haven glanced at the door and said swiftly, “One minute, Mary. I . . . there is a slight complication and I need to tell you about it before Jenny comes back in. It’s about Miss Dresden. With the girl still missing . . . I don’t know what Pamela told you about her, but I think now that she has eloped, but still, until I find her I feel uneasy about asking Jenny to marry me, so I was hoping—”
“What are you blathering on about, Gerry?” Mary’s round face was a mask of bewilderment. She shook her head and frowned, saying, “Who is this Miss Dresden? And eloped? What are ye talkin’ about? Who are ye talkin’ about?”
“Miss Dresden, the girl I am supposedly betrothed to.”
Mary stared at him as if he had lost his wits and Gerry felt a swell of impatience. He needed to talk to Mary before Jenny came back in. “The girl who is missing, the one Pammy asked you about.”
“Pamela didna ask about any girl. Leastways, not in my hearin’. What are ye talkin’ about?”
“Idiot,” he muttered, about his sister. He briefly reminded her about the family pressure on him to marry suitably—Mary knew much of that already—and told her about his mother’s scheme to marry him to Miss Jane Dresden, of Bath, and the young lady’s journey north to Yorkshire. “But when she got to the inn,” he continued, “she received a rather shocking letter from her mother and either that, or—well, I think she might have a lover with whom she eloped—caused her to leave the inn suddenly, making it look like a kidnapping. I worry that I am wrong about this and that she really was kidnapped. I have spent the last several days trying to find out where she has gone.” He frowned into the fire and picked up a poker, jabbing at a log. “And yet if she was abducted, I would think the kidnappers would have come forward with a demand for money.” He threw down the fire iron and passed one hand over his hair, muttering to himself, “And the note was not right. It was too well written. I worry though that she is somewhere out there. She disappeared that very afternoon, the last time I came to see you before your cousin arrived.”
Mary, stunned into silence, was staring at the fireplace mantel. “Oh, my dear sweet Lord, Gerry!” she muttered. “Oh, my dear sweet Lord! Oh!”
“Mary, what’s wrong? What is it?”
“Oh, Gerry, I have somethin’ to tell ye. Somethin’ . . . oh, my Lord!”
• • •
Jane carried the heavy bucket up to the door and paused, putting it down to flex her poor hand. Much more of this work and her hands would be hardened and callused like Mary’s were. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, but she had always prided herself on her pretty hands. She was unfashionable in almost every other sense, with an undistinguished face, ordinary hair and a too-plump figure, but her hands were perfect. No more though. There was a blister on the right one. She picked at it and drew in a quick breath of air at the slice of pain. It stung!
She stared at the door before her, taking a deep breath. It was nerve-wracking and difficult being in the room with Gerry, knowing she was going to have to leave without ever telling him the truth. It just wasn’t fair to him, she had decided, to put him in the position of being in opposition to his lordship. No matter what Miss Pamela said about Haven being a lamb! He was her brother and was likely to be indulgent with her. With a subordinate he would be a much different man, no doubt. As it was she was going to have to write Lord Haven a long letter telling him the whole truth and absolving Gerry and Mary of any wrongdoing.
She pulled the door open just a crack and bent over to pick up her pail. She heard her name, and, ashamed of herself but still overwhelmed by curiosity, she put her ear to the door.
• • •
Mary, still stunned by Gerry’s statement, stuttered, “G-Gerry, it is Jenny! She is the girl. Or the girl is her. It has to be so! Jenny is this Miss Jane Dresden!”
“What are you talking about?” Perplexed by her babbled explanation, Gerry gazed at her warily as if she were mad.
Mary’s mind raced. She remembered the night she had gone out to the barn, the girl had struck her immediately as gentry, even though she wore a torn serving girl’s dress. Gerry’s information clarified everything. Jenny was no longer some poor girl running from an unwanted marriage or a lecherous uncle, but she was Gerry’s supposed betrothed! Had she known all along who he was? Had she been playing them all for fools? But no, surely there was not a woman bold enough in the world to play the part of a serving wench with the man who was supposed to be her husband. What did it mean?
“Mary,” Gerry said impatiently, grasping her hands. “What are you talking about?”
His raised voice awoke Molly and Mary took a few minutes to soothe the baby and gather her thoughts. Finally she took a dee
p breath and looked into Gerry’s honest blue eyes, blazing out in the dim light from the fire. “Gerry,” she said calmly. “Listen to me! I think Jenny is this Miss Jane Dresden.”
“What are you saying?”
“Hear me out, Gerry!” she said. “Four nights ago or so, that same evening after you had bin here for dinner, I heard a noise out in the barn. I went to look, ’cause the door latch has come a mite loose. I found a girl there, a young woman with a torn dress, huddled in the corner of the barn, wet an’ cold an’ scared. I took her in. She slept through the whole next day and when she woke up, she told me her name was Jenny. She said she was a lady’s maid, an’ that she got lost.”
“Why did you tell me she was your cousin?”
“She was frightened and I didna want to have to explain her presence. She wasn’t tellin’ the truth, I knew that much. I didna know then what she was running from, but she was so frightened, and I thought it simpler—”
“Good God, Mary. Simpler? Why didn’t you trust me?”
“I don’t know!” Mary said, near tears. “I bin that worrit, Gerry, knowin’ I lied to you. After the first day I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how! And I promised her!”
“This means . . .” Gerry rose and paced. “This means that your supposed cousin, Jenny, is Miss Jane Dresden, the girl who is supposed to be the next Viscountess Haven!”
The door creaked and Mary, with a muttered imprecation for the wind, stood and bustled over to it, pulling it closed. “I suppose she is!”
Both of them paused, not saying another word for a long few minutes, silence in the cabin but for the crackling fire. It was a lot to take in, but suddenly Haven started laughing, his laughter a rich, low chuckle, ascending into a bellow of laughter that startled Molly again, raising from her a wail of fear. “I’m sorry, Mary,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath while his friend tended to her baby. “But it’s just too funny! I came here tonight to propose to her, not knowing that our marriage has already been set up and if we had just let . . . if either one of us had just told the truth . . . oh, this is too rich. I do believe that Grand knew all along, the plaguey old besom! That is why she urged me to propose!”
Mary shook her head, a rueful expression on her pretty face. “I’m that sorry, Gerry. I should have told you she was not my cousin, but I wanted the girl to tell you herself. She was so frightened, and I didn’t feel right breakin’ faith with her. What do you think made her run, then?”
Gerry sobered and sat back down on the hearth. “I think it was probably me, or rather Viscount Haven, she was running from. Knowing her now, knowing how she feels about society and all the stiff-rumped jackasses that people it, and some of the things she said about Viscount Haven . . .” He passed a hand over his face and scrubbed his eyes. “Mary, I have to tell her, reassure her; if she doesn’t want to marry me—”
“But things are different now,” Mary said. “If I’m not mistaken,” she said, casting her old friend a sly look, “you have both found a spot of romance between ye. I think she’ll forgive you yer masquerade, Gerry, when she finds out the dreaded Viscount Haven is her very own country swain. You’ve both bin wanderin’ around smellin’ of April and May ever since the moment you first saw her sittin’ on my hearth.”
“You’re right there. I felt like I knew the instant we met that I could love her. But she’s lovely inside, too, Mary, is that not true? Did you not find her so?” He looked to her anxiously, trusting Mary’s instincts.
Mary smiled kindly. “I believe in my heart that she is truly a sweet young lady and without an ounce of pretension in her bones. I still canna get my mind around her bein’ this Miss Dresden! I knew she was special from the very first moment I saw her, but I didn’t know why.” She thought a moment, staring into the fire as it crackled and glowed, an ember popping and causing a twig to tumble and flame up on the hearth floor. “Mayhap it be wrong—an’ the lies both of you have told . . .” She shook her head in dismay. “And myself, too. I’m not one to cast the first stone. But I’m glad for this charade, for it gave the two of you time to fall in love without yer ma and yer sister interferin’. This might never have happened otherwise, both of you being stiff and formal and on yer best company manners. When you just thought she was me cousin, Jenny, you were yerself, not the fearsome Lord Haven some in the village talk about.”
Gerry looked chagrined. “I find it hard to be myself when I know people are looking to me to be Viscount Haven. I have never fit the role.”
“Ah, Gerry, you mayn’t know it, but you fit it to perfection. If you would only let yerself be, and know yer good enough, just as you are.”
Gerry, flushing from her compliment, looked to the door. “Where is she? I want to tell her, I want to ask her . . .” Alarm replaced impatience. He stood and paced to the door. “She should be back by now.” He threw open the door and tipped over a pail.
One full pail of water.
• • •
The next Viscountess Haven!
The night air was cold—dusk had swiftly replaced twilight and the gloom was gathering apace—and she was unprepared. Protected only by her woolen shawl, Mary’s woolen shawl, she stumbled over a tree root and fell, but got up and sped over the high moor. This time should have been easier, for she had been over the fells and moors a few times with Gerry and knew her way to the Lesley, which ran eventually through the town of Lesleydale. And yet everything looked different by moonlight.
Gerry. Now he knew who she was—she would never forget the pain in his voice as he berated Mary for telling her that Jenny was her cousin—and now he would hate her for her dissembling. She was Miss Jane Dresden, granddaughter to an earl, niece to a baroness, as had been drummed into her head from birth.
And the next Viscountess Haven. By Gerry’s own words condemned to a life of stiff and formal living among the aristocracy, wife of a peer of the realm, mother to the next heir, her main purpose in life bearing that one necessary son.
As she shivered in the chill of an April evening, she thought back. Her mind must have been addled by the frightful letter from her mother that she had married that awful charlatan, Mr. Jessup, with his fake smile and cloying ways. She had no home to go to if she rejected the viscount. It was a betrayal of everything her mother had told her to convince her to go north, and it made her own promises meaningless. In that moment she had felt the urgent desire—no, need—to get away, to escape, to leave behind everything that was constricting her life into the unnatural shape it took. Who would it be hurting? No one. Who would even care, really? Again, no one.
And so she had concocted a scheme, a mad, unplanned, wild flight from responsibility. She had scribbled a note—she did not even remember now what she wrote, but she had tried to make it sound as unschooled as she could—and had, while supposedly asking for something for her aunt, noted where the laundry was kept and her escape route. In her whole cloistered life she had never done anything so impetuous; she had been frightened, but exhilarated, too. It had seemed like an adventure at the time.
She had surreptitiously placed the note in the stable while conferring with Lady Mortimer’s driver, a surly old man named Grouse. Then she had manufactured a reason to go downstairs—the baroness was always wanting something that Jane was required to run and do, and so that was the simple part of the plan to effect—and had swiftly raced down the stairs, her pearls and money secure in the bosom of her dress, changed into a servant’s dress that was in the laundry area, and raced into the stable yard. That had been her undoing. She could still smell the drunken bar patron’s fetid breath and feel him and his companion’s grasping, groping hands as they muttered unintelligible demands and took unconscionable liberties. If it had not been for another man’s shouted warning and query as to what was going on, she would never have gotten away.
Shocked and horrified by treatment such as that she had raced away, not realizing until she was well gone that though she still retained her hold on her carriage dress, bundl
ed under one arm, she had lost her pearls and small embroidered purse of money somewhere in the struggle, likely when her dress was torn. Perhaps they were still laying somewhere in that stable yard under a bale of hay or in some filthy corner. She had stumbled on, and though she had intended to take her proper clothes with her to change into once safely out of the inn, they had weighed her down, so she thrust her bundle of clothing in the first hedgerow she had found. It was all a blur now, the incident in the stable frightening her so badly it had made her hasty and careless.
And now what was she going to do, out on the moors alone again, and at night? It was just like the first night. She didn’t even have her pearls to sell or pawn, and she was dressed in the garb of a serving wench at the inn. She was running from the very people who had been so kind to her because she could not face Gerry’s pain and anger. Having hurt him and placed him in an impossible dilemma, it served her right for her deception if she must suffer a little now.
She wandered down a slope and glanced up at the sky. It was darkening but the moon was still out, allowing just enough light to see the ground. Had she made her own life more difficult by placing obstacles in her own path? Perhaps. But she had always had her dream life to sustain her, the illusion that if only she could find her little cottage, her small, friendly village, the workaday world of the common folk, she could find happiness. Now she knew that she did not even fit there. She was wretched at cooking, hopeless at household chores and useless at farm work. Her fantasy was a chimera, dissolving in the cool, calm reason of the night.
The sky was darkening and clouds were rolling in over the moon. She was close to tears, but as she began to shiver, she realized that the wetness on her cheeks was not tears rolling down them but rain. It was starting to spit, and then drizzle. She must find someplace to shelter for the night. She remembered the shepherds’ rude huts Gerry had pointed out to her on one of their walks. That would have to do. With a new determination she glanced around her, took her bearings from the landscape, and set out to find one.
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