A Stranger at Castonbury

by Amanda McCabe

  And he was the only one who could do it. It was his name that had been used to dishonour his family. He had to end it.

  Jamie lowered himself from the high seat and tied the horse up to the garden fence. He watched the house surreptitiously the whole time, pretending to be absorbed in his task, and he was rewarded by the flicker of a curtain at an upstairs window. He glimpsed a flash of pale hair before the fabric fell back in place.

  Someone was there, after all. Was she alone?

  Jamie pushed open the broken gate and made his way carefully up the overgrown path. The silence seemed to roar around him, the wind through the trees, the rustle of the old, dried leaves and dead flowers under his boots, the creak of the house.

  At the door, Jamie rested one hand on his hip where he could feel the weight of his pistol tucked inside his coat and raised the other to knock. The sound echoed hollowly, and for a moment he could hear nothing. Then it came to him, the faintest brush as of slippers on a dusty floor. If his senses hadn’t been trained to high alert in Spain, he would have missed it.

  Then it went quiet again.

  ‘Miss Walters?’ he called gently. ‘I know you are there. It’s Jamie Montague. I just want to speak with you.’

  There was a small rustle again, and then nothing.

  ‘Please, Miss Walters,’ he said. ‘I mean you no harm. I don’t want to have to return with my brothers, who might not be so peaceable.’

  After a long, tense moment, there was the scrape of a lock being drawn back and the door opened a couple of inches. Through the crack Jamie saw a blue muslin skirt and a flash of a pale cheek. She gasped when she saw him, and he thrust his booted foot into the gap in case she decided to slam it shut again.

  ‘It is you,’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ he answered. ‘Not quite as dead as you thought, I fear.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I have my ways. Now, please let me in so we can talk in private.’ Not that there was anyone to hear but the wind and the trees, but Jamie still didn’t want his family’s business conducted out of doors.

  Alicia glanced back over her shoulder and hesitated. But finally she nodded and pulled the door open all the way.

  Jamie stepped into a tiny hall just as she spun around and hurried away. He followed her into a small sitting room, filled with furniture draped in holland covers and an empty fireplace surmounted by a dusty mantel. One settee was uncovered and piled with blankets. Alicia rushed over to it and picked up the child who sat there playing with some wooden blocks, a cherubic toddler with blue eyes and golden curls.

  She held him tightly to her shoulder as she turned to face Jamie. Her eyes, the same china-blue as the baby’s, were bright with unshed tears but she held her head high.

  Jamie remembered her from Spain, how she had scurried so quietly behind Colonel Chambers’s noisy wife, how her pale hair and plain clothes had blended into the background. Now she was just as quiet, trembling but calm, and he could scarcely credit she was the same woman who had pulled such a bold, dangerous scheme.

  Perhaps Everett was right. Perhaps someone had driven her to it. Perhaps someone had forced her, blackmailed her.

  But that didn’t change the fact that she had done it. And he needed answers.

  ‘Have you come to arrest me?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Jamie answered. As he watched, the child popped his fingers into his little mouth and grinned at Jamie. Jamie could see why his father had loved the child. But it was not his son. Not the son he had once dared to dream of having with Catalina.

  ‘I need to know what happened,’ he said.

  ‘We thought you were dead!’ Alicia burst out, her calm cracking. ‘I didn’t think it would hurt anyone, and your father seemed so happy. I only wanted to take care of my little Crispin.’

  ‘Crispin?’ Jamie laughed. ‘You named him after my father? You are bold.’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Alicia said again.

  ‘So you came up with this whole elaborate scheme all on your own?’ Jamie said. ‘You found my lost signet ring after it was stolen, forged a marriage licence and found my family. Put the whole plan together and thought you could fool everyone. Very clever.’

  ‘Yes. I—I did it all myself,’ she said. But Jamie saw her eyes flicker, her shoulders tense. The baby frowned and fidgeted.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Tell me what happened, the truth, and I can help you and your son. But if you don’t there is nothing I can do for you and no place where you can hide from me.’

  Alicia turned away to put the child back down on the settee and handed him one of his blocks. Jamie gave her the moment to think, and when she faced him again she nodded.

  ‘There—there was someone who helped me,’ she said slowly. ‘A friend.’

  ‘He was not much of a friend if he led you into such a crime,’ Jamie said. ‘And now he appears to have abandoned you here. Unless he is hidden in that cupboard over there.’

  ‘No. He is gone. I don’t know where he went, and I...’ Alicia broke off on a choked sob. ‘He said he knew what to do, how to make all this come out right.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Alicia bit her lip as the tears spilled from her eyes. ‘Captain Hugh Webster. You remember him from Spain? He gave me your ring, he told me what to do.’

  Webster. Jamie shook his head. He should have known. He remembered playing cards with Webster in Spain. Everyone suspected the man of cheating but no one could prove it. He had always made Jamie feel uneasy in his presence, and now he knew why.

  The way the man had stared at Catalina, which had made Jamie want to call the man out, should have been the only clue he needed to tell him the man was untrustworthy.

  ‘Of course. Webster,’ Jamie said. ‘And now he has fled to leave you to take his punishment.’

  Alicia sat down beside her son, sobbing. ‘What will happen to my Crispin now? I know I should not have listened to Webster, I should never have...’

  ‘I will help you, Alicia, if you will help me,’ Jamie said. Despite himself he was moved by her tears, by the child clinging to her.

  ‘I would do anything I could to help you, Lord Hatherton, I swear it,’ Alicia answered hoarsely. ‘But what can I do?’

  ‘You are going to help me find Webster,’ Jamie said. He thought of everything his family had been through, he thought of what the strain had done to his father. He could scarcely believe the difference between the strong and formidable man he had said goodbye to and the frail shadow he had come home to. He thought of Giles, taking on a responsibility he had never wanted, having to contend with this false claim under the burden of the failing family finances. He thought of his sisters and what they must have gone through with all the uncertainty. And he thought of his brother Harry, who had come all the way to Seville to find out the truth, of all the hardships he had encountered on his journey. He knew that he bore some responsibility for that, but this man Webster, he must be made to pay. And Jamie knew just how to do it. He would find Webster, and then he would kill him....

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Do you think there will be handsome young men at this party, Mrs Moreno?’

  Catalina wanted to smile at Lydia Westman’s shyly eager words. It was very hard to keep a stern governess demeanour in the face of the girl’s enthusiasm, but sternness had to be maintained. Catalina had learned that after weeks of being practically alone with the girl in the countryside before being summoned to this wedding. Lydia was a romantic young lady with a great fondness for horrid novels about ghosts and crumbling castles and lost loves, and she was rather eager to find out what it was like to fall in love herself. Catalina had not been with her very long at all, only a matter of weeks, but she had grown fond of the girl. And she had seen right away that her first task would be to make sure Lydia employed a bit of sense in who she chose to marry.

  Unlike Catalina herself, who had thought nothing of throwing herself headlong into wild wartime
romance—and paid the price with her heart, which was now locked safely away.

  ‘I am sure there will be,’ Catalina said, bracing herself as the carriage jounced over another rut in the road. Lydia didn’t seem to notice, as she had been buried in her latest volume of romantic poetry for several miles, leaving Catalina to her own thoughts. ‘It is a wedding, after all. I’m sure the bridegroom has many young relatives and friends.’

  ‘And a wedding in a great family!’ Lydia said with a sigh. ‘I can’t believe I have never met them before, even though the duchess was my mother’s cousin. My friend Miss Crompton told me the Montagues are said to be most peculiar. Do you suppose that means there is madness in the family? I have never met a real mad person before. It should be most interesting, don’t you think, Mrs Moreno?’

  Catalina bit her lip to keep from laughing. ‘I am sure they are no more peculiar than any other ducal family. Such people are entitled to their eccentricities, I believe, especially here in England.’

  ‘Do you not have dukes in Spain, Mrs Moreno?’

  ‘Of course we do. But they are rather different.’ Catalina drew a volume of Don Quixote from her valise and handed it to Lydia. ‘Why do you not read that for a while? There are lots of mad people in that tale, and you can practise your Spanish a bit. You have been doing so well with it.’ Learning languages was one of the reasons Lydia’s guardian had hired a foreign companion for her, that and Mrs Burnes’s stellar recommendation.

  Lydia frowned as she turned the book over in her hands. ‘It looks rather...long.’

  ‘We still have some time before we reach Castonbury.’

  Lydia nodded and opened the volume, and as Catalina had expected she was soon lost in the don’s adventures with Sancho Panza. And Catalina was left alone again.

  She gazed out of the carriage window as the scenery bounced past. It was so green and soft, so very different from the rolling brown hills and enclosed gardens of Spain.

  But different was what she had sought when she had fled Spain. There was nothing for her there. Even if she had sought to reclaim her family’s place, her well-known anti-monarchical ideas would have made life in Spain uncomfortable. And she had little money. When the chance had come to travel to England as nurse to an English general’s sickly wife, it had seemed like an opportunity. A chance to begin life again after all that had happened.

  Even though it meant beginning in England, Jamie’s homeland. Yet she had never imagined her new position, as governess and companion to a pretty debutante, would take her to his actual home. She had only got the job thanks to Mrs Burnes’s glowing reference and had known little about the task at first. She and Lydia had been staying in the countryside, away from Town gossip.

  Castonbury. She remembered how he had spoken of it, his family’s home, and it hadn’t sounded like it could be a real place. It had sounded like a whole world in itself, a green land of lakes and follies and hidden bowers. Catalina had loved his tales of it, because her own home was gone and she had never really felt like she belonged there anyway. She didn’t belong anywhere, except for those few moments in Jamie’s arms when she hadn’t been able to imagine being anywhere else.

  But that had been an illusion in the end, a dream she had conjured up all on her own. The only reality in life was to be alone. Twice widowed, she had learned that well, and she was content with it. She had learned to put Jamie away, hidden deep in her heart. To forget about what had been—and what might have been, if he had come back and they had been able to work things out between them. If everything had been as she dreamed.

  Never had she thought she would go to his home and see his family. When Lydia’s guardian had asked her to go with the girl for this wedding, her first instinct had been to refuse, to quit her position and find a new one where she would never have to see this place. Never be so starkly reminded of Jamie, and how her dreams had been shattered by his work and then by his death.

  Catalina looked across the carriage at Lydia. The girl had her head bent over her book, the daylight playing over the red-gold curls that peeked from under her chip straw bonnet. Catalina liked Lydia. In truth, she had become quite fond of her in the short time they had been together, and she sensed that Lydia needed her. The girl had been motherless for a long time, and in her one Season weathering the storm of Society life hadn’t been easy for her. Catalina couldn’t just leave her.

  Even if it did mean going to Castonbury.

  It is only for a few days, Catalina told herself. Just a few days in a house that she would surely find was only a house, a place of stone and brick where no trace of Jamie remained. She would be quiet and unobtrusive, as she always was, and the family would take no notice of her.

  Then they would go back to London and it would be over.

  As if she sensed Catalina watching her, Lydia glanced up and smiled. But it wasn’t her usual sunny smile. It seemed strangely tentative.

  ‘Is something wrong, pequeña?’ Catalina asked.

  Lydia shook her head. ‘No, of course not. What could be wrong? I just...’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I just wonder—will they like me? The Montagues?’ Lydia sounded so young and unsure.

  ‘Of course they will like you,’ Catalina said. ‘They are your family.’

  ‘I know, but they don’t really feel like my family. I hardly know them at all. I mean, I met the duchess once when I was a child, though I scarcely remember her, and Lady Kate came to call when she had her Season, but that’s all. I’m not sure why they even invited me to this wedding.’

  ‘Perhaps because they want to know you better?’ Catalina said soothingly. ‘I am sure there is nothing to fear. You need only enjoy yourself for a few days and get to know your relatives. You are sure to like them, and they can’t help but like you.’

  Lydia bit her lip. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I am sure of it.’ Catalina gave her a smile. ‘And I am sure there will be handsome young men there, just as you hoped.’

  Lydia laughed. ‘Oh, I do hope so! If I can only be brave enough to talk to them.’

  ‘You need have no fear of that. They will talk to you.’ Catalina tapped the book in Lydia’s hands. ‘Now, tell me what you think of the don. Have you any Spanish words you want to go over?’

  They talked about the story until the carriage slowed down to sway around a bend in the road. Catalina looked out the window and saw they were rolling through a pair of elaborately wrought iron gates surmounted by a family crest.

  Castonbury. They were here at last.

  The ornate iron gates, surmounted by the family crest and with a substantial stone lodge nearby, stood open to greet guests. Vast gardens lay beyond in a rolling vista of beautiful views, with twin lakes in the distance connected by an arched bridge and with white marble follies on hilltops. It was all just as Jamie had said it was.

  Catalina swallowed hard as they drew closer to the house. It looked as if it had been just there on the land for ever, a graceful, classical sweep of a house, pale and perfect and somehow as substantial as a mountain. It proclaimed that it belonged there, that its family belonged there. It spoke of tradition and duty and devotion.

  And Catalina could see so clearly now that she could never have belonged there as the Montagues did. Even if Jamie had lived and brought her here as his marchioness, it would not have been hers.

  ‘Mrs Moreno?’ Lydia asked, her voice soft with concern. ‘Are you quite well? You look so strange all of a sudden.’

  Catalina turned away from the window and smiled at Lydia. ‘I am perfectly fine. I think I’ve just been in the carriage too long and need some fresh air. Isn’t the house lovely?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Lydia turned eagerly to the view, her eyes shining as she took in the prospect down the sweep of the drive. ‘I have heard about Castonbury for ages, and it is just as I imagined it. It looks as if a king should live there.’

  A king. A memory suddenly flashed through Catalina’s mind, of Jamie walking w
ith her beside a Spanish river, the sunlight gleaming on his dark hair and turning his skin to pure, molten gold. In that moment when everything seemed to go still around them, she had been sure he looked like a god come to earth.

  The carriage drew to a halt, and Catalina was pulled out of her memories and into the present moment. She wasn’t here to remember, she was here to work, to get through these few days and get on with her life again. She straightened the ribbons of her bonnet and smoothed down the collar of her grey pelisse.

  A footman hurried to open the carriage door and lower the steps. Catalina stepped down onto the gravel drive behind Lydia, and had to grab the girl’s arm before she could go dashing off to look at some horses in a nearby paddock. Lydia had never had the chance to learn to really ride and yet was fascinated by horses.

  ‘We must greet our hostess and find our rooms first, Lydia, don’t forget,’ Catalina said. ‘There will be time for exploring later.’

  Lydia pouted a bit, but she obediently followed Catalina up the wide stone steps and through the pillared portico into the front doors. The soaring hall was so dark and gloomy that for a moment Catalina couldn’t see anything at all. She felt like she was surrounded by shadows, by the sweet smell of flowers and beeswax polish pressing in on her.

  She rubbed her gloved hand over her eyes and looked up to see a staircase winding into the upper recesses of the house. Marble pillars lined the space, soaring up to a painted ceiling and more galleries above. Paintings in heavy gilt frames were hung on the panelled wall along its length, an array of Elizabethan ruffs and Cavalier plumes mixed with powdered wigs and satin gowns. And one young man standing under a tree in the Castonbury Park, his hat held casually in his hand as the breeze tousled his dark hair and he smiled out at the viewer.

  Jamie. It was Jamie, younger and more carefree than when she had known him, but just as handsome. Just as wondrously alive, before Spain had altered his soul.