“Campbell told me you were asking about the number of guest rooms at Baronsford.”
Millicent looked up at Lyon and smiled. “Yes, I was.”
“This is the reason for the party.”
“To compare the size of castles and manor houses?” she quipped.
“Even better. We will stuff their bellies at the same time that we try to shame them into not pushing out their tenants. We shall also try to get a few of them to offer positions to a few of the vagrant families. I tried to do that today by visiting some of the neighboring estates. But it is too difficult to press them one by one. Sir Such-and-such is in London. Baron This-and-that was interested only in hearing about you.” He waved a hand impatiently. “We need to bring them all here and try to convince them at once.”
“With this kind of agenda, do you think anyone will show up at the party?”
“I think they will all come.”
“Why?”
“They are all beside themselves with curiosity about the new Countess of Baronsford. And…” He pointed to a chair. “More than few of these curs will jump at the opportunity of looking down on me.”
“They’ll burn in hell first. I shall arrange for you to be carried about on a pedestal ten feet high.”
“Such language!” he said, laughing and pulling her more tightly against his side. “Does this mean you will arrange the party?”
“Absolutely. We must do something for those unfortunate wretches.”
Lyon kissed her again, and Millicent felt the desire and even the love in his embrace. She felt cherished.
“I know this has only been your second day at Baronsford, but I thought you should know that you have made a great impression.” His fingers gently pushed a loose tendril off her face. “And though you have said you have no aspirations with regard to this place, the people here already respect you. They already see your endearing concern for all.”
Millicent remembered what Truscott had told her today about Emma loving Baronsford more than Lyon. She imagined the pain that Lyon must have endured.
“I asked Walter to take me to the cliffs overlooking the river today. I needed to see the place where you fell. The place where you lost Emma.”
“You mean where she died.”
Millicent didn’t miss the hard edge in his tone. “A wise man once told me about this road that both of us had once walked before. He told me that we need to do better the second time.”
“A wise man, you say?”
“Yes. My husband. The terribly wise Lord Aytoun. Have you heard of him?”
“Oh, yes. The Lord of Scandal.”
She leaned against him and traced the hard lines around his mouth with the tip of one finger. “I don’t want any secrets between us, Lyon. I don’t want anything left unsaid. No assumptions or misunderstandings. Only the truth.”
“Truscott told you about Emma.”
“And your brothers’ relationship with her,” she said quietly. “There wa so much that I didn’t know, and there is still so much about me and my past that you don’t know, either. And today, after I left the village and rode down along the riverbank, I ran into so many people who have been pushed out of their homes. Families that have nearly lost hope. And I thought of the two of us and how we have been given a second chance at happiness, and how much I wanted to succeed in that.”
Millicent let her hopes rise when Lyon’s arm tightened around her. She tucked her head under his chin.
“Being down there also made me realize that now Emma was no longer the supernatural creature that I had imagined her to be. Now, knowing more about her, I realized that she was simply a woman made of flesh and blood—a human being with all the strengths and failings that all of us have. Knowing that, I realized I could survive this road and perhaps even make a difference as I travel along on it. But at the same time, I recognized how important it was for me to tell you everything I could about myself, too.”
The feel of his arm around her gave Millicent the strength she needed to continue.
“I was practically given to Wentworth at the age of twenty three for the lack of a better marriage offer. My uncle, who had been my guardian, was too terrified of the embarrassment and the expense of having a spinster on his hands forever. So I had to go. It mattered naught by then who it was to be, no matter how bad the man’s reputation or character.” She let out a shaky breath, resolved to keep nothing back. “I remained married to him for five years, though I still find it a miracle that I survived that long. To my husband, I was just a bit of property, like his land, his sugar holdings, his African workers, his horses and dogs and sheep and cattle. And he saw it as his right to abuse us and to cut us down as he wished.”
Millicent felt the tension in Lyon’s body as his anger grew, but she continued to talk. “During those years—when I was at Melbury Hall and not trying to hide from him in London—I formed a bond, of sorts, with many of the black workers that Wentworth held as slaves. During this time I also had the good fortune of becoming friends with Reverend and Mrs. Trimble and with Mr. Cunningham, the schoolteacher at Knebworth Village. These good people, with the support of our neighbor Lord Stanmore, were trying to improve the conditions at Melbury Hall that the slaves there were forced to endure.”
She pushed away from Lyon’s chest and tried to force down the lump that was growing in her throat. “Although Wentworth had nothing to fear, my friendship with Mr. Cunningham became a very sore subject with him. He refused to see that the man’s compassion was his reason for visiting Melbury Hall.
He preferred to believe that we were lovers. We were not, though I think Mr. Cunningham at the end confused his compassion for me with love.”
“Millicent—”
“There is more I need to tell you about Cunningham, but let me first tell you something else. Wentworth believed that it was his right as master to use me as he saw fit. In short, I found myself with child. He used to say that it was his right ‘to touch as I like and to punish as I see fit.’ He preferred to punish, and he beat me once so severely during that time that I was confined to bed for weeks. I also lost the child.”
She shook her head when he tried to pull her back into his arms.
“Let me finish. I need to tell you all of it.” She blinked back he tears. “After losing that baby, I was lost in my own grief for months. At the same time I knew that I was wearing out my value to Wentworth. It was only a matter of time before he would kill me. He had done it before.”
She looked up into Lyon’s face. His fury was barely restrained.
“Wentworth’s first wife’s family owned a number of plantations in Jamaica. That is where he made a small fortune, but just before he decided to move back to England, she died…mysteriously. Wentworth told me, during a moment of drunken boasting, that she had worn out her value.”
Millicent moved her hand over Lyon’s fisted fingers. “Then came the summer before last. I accidentally met an old school friend at Knebworth Village. It was Rebecca. She had been in the American colonies for ten years.”
Millicent recalled those days of meeting secretly with Rebecca in the Grove or at the church in the village.
“She helped me realize I had to find a way out of that marriage, before I ended up like Wentworth’s first wife. We even went as far as planning an escape to Philadelphia or somewhere in the colonies. But then one day, before we could put our plan into action, Wentworth flew into a rage when Lord Stanmore took away one of the slave children who had been severely abused by the bailiff. After that, everything broke loose at once.”
“You are shivering.” Lyon’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, and he drew her against his side. Millicent forced herself to go on.
“It was June. We had hidden Violet in the Grove to protect her from Wentworth and his lechery. I sent Jonah to the village one night to ask Mr. Cunningham to come at dawn to take Violet away. And he did. But Wentworth and his bailiff, a brute named Mickleby, appeared and claimed that it was I who wa
s running away with the schoolteacher that morning. Wentworth shot and killed Mr. Cunningham that morning.”
Lyon’s hand gently caressed her. “And Wentworth was killed by Stanmore?”
That was the public explanation, but Millicent wanted him to know the truth. “After killing Cunningham, Wentworth went berserk. He wanted to murder everyone who mattered to me…before killing me. He decided to start with Jonah.” She held Lyon’s hand and looked up into his face. “No one knows this, but Moses killed Wentworth that morning. Stanmore arrived just in time to save Moses’s life. To save Moses from having to face the law for killing a white man, and to spare me the scandal that might follow, Stanmore took responsibility for all of it. How much he told the magistrate of what really happened I don’t know, but there were never any questions asked later on.”
“I knew I liked Stanmore, but what about the bailiff?”
“As he prepared to kill Moses, he died by Stanmore’s sword.”
“Who else knows this?” Lyon asked, concerned.
“Only the few Africans who were in the Grove that morning. And Rebecca and Stanmore. And I believe Violet learned of it later from one of the women who had been hiding her in the Grove.” She held his hand. “You are worried.”
“For Moses’s life,” he said solemnly. “If the truth of that day ever reaches the wrong ears, his life will be worth nothing.”
“But no one will know,” she said, determined. “Wentworth would have slain many people, that morning including me, if it were not for Moses’s bravery. He saved my life. You know him. How gentle he is. And no one who was there would ever betray him.”
****
Shadows flickered on the walls of the servants’ hall, and Gibbs sat before the fire, staring into the dying flames. The house was quiet, the doors secured, and Moses was on his watch rounds, but the Highlander could not shake the feeling that was haunting him.
A memory kept nagging at him. A memory of his childhood.
He was only about five, but even then he knew that something momentous was happening. Something that would change his world. He and his mother and sister were sitting before the fire in their cottage on the hillside. His father and older brothers had gone off a few week earlier to join Bonny Prince Charlie in his fight against the Hanovers. As they waited that night, they heard the keening cries of the women in the glen, and he knew his father and brothers were not coming back.
This same feeling was haunting him now, and Gibbs did not like it at all.
Mary Page glided into the hall like an angel, guarding her bit of paradise. She was growing fond of him, he could tell. And for the first time in his life, the feeling was mutual.
“Come sit with me, Mrs. Page. Ye have been on your feet this entire day.”
She snuffed a guttering candle and adjusted a stack of plates on the table before coming and taking the seat beside him. Her eyes were warm when they swept over his face. “You look as troubled as I feel, Mr. Gibbs.”
He reached for her hand and she let him entwine his fingers with hers. “Tell me what is bothering ye, Mary.”
“I don’t know what is happening, but something is wrong. And I am not imagining this. The entire household is feeling it.” She looked about the empty hall. “Violet didn’t take a single meal today, and I saw her looking out the windows at the road a dozen times, if I saw her do it once. Ohenewaa has been keeping to her room, and every time I passed by her door, I could hear her chanting her African songs. And then one of the serving maids said she thought she saw Ned Cranch in the shadow of the woods, peering up at the house with an ax in his hand.”
“That sounds a wee bit far-fetched, Mary. The stonemason not only left his job here; he has also emptied his room at the inn.”
“Now, what do you think happened to him?”
“Maybe he got word that his wife had a bairn. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t come around to get paid for the work he’d done. Perhaps he’s planning on coming back, though I do not know why he went off without telling us.”
“You see, Mr. Gibbs?” Mary looked him in the eye. “Everyone is behaving strangely, and there is just no explaining it.”
He ran his finger gently over the palm of her hand. “Ye know all this imagining could be the result of having Lord and Lady Aytoun away. From what ye told me yourself, the mistress is not one to spend time away from Melbury Hall. And ‘tis ten years since I’ve been separated from his lordship.”
“Do you really think that is all ‘tis, Mr. Gibbs? Do you think we are worrying about nothing?”
The way Mary’s large eyes were watching the movement of his finger, the innocent way the blush had crept up her cheeks, Gibbs couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and pressing a kiss onto her forehead.
“I don’t know, Mary. But I can tell ye I feel better having ye beside me.”
“The same goes for me, Angus,” she said in a small voice, moving closer to his side.
As the two sat and stared into the fire, though, their feeling of foreboding was not easily shaken.
****
“I did not mean to worry you so with what I told you earlier about Wentworth’s death,” Millicent whispered against Lyon’s ear, curling an arm around his chest. “I am sorry. Now you cannot sleep, can you?”
His head turned toward her on the pillow. “That is not what is keeping me awake. I have been thinking of what Truscott told you about Emma.”
“It was wrong of me to ask him to take me there. I should have waited until you were ready to—”
“No. I am glad you went. And I am relieved that you know as much as you do about her.” His hand gently caressed her hair and her face. “What has been keeping me awake is the fact that I should tell you the rest of it—of what happened that day.”
Until this moment Millicent hadn’t realized that how mixed her feelings were. The possibility of Lyon's somehow being responsible for Emma’s death was a plausible reason for his melancholy after the accident. But she had never wanted to believe it.
Millicent looked beyond her husband and the bed at the half-light of the bedchamber. The flames were burning low in the fireplace. Despite the shadows lurking all around them, she thought, she trusted this man. How fortunate they were to have each other.
“Will you tell me?”
Lyon took hold of her hand and stared up at the ceiling. “We fought. We always fought. Everything about Emma and me was a mistake from the very beginning. We were ten years apart, but it may as well have been a hundred. We did not understand each other. We did not speak the same language. Could not comprehend the other’s needs. And this was no one’s fault but mine. I always thought I knew what she wanted. I had watched her grow up. I had watched her liveliness and beauty bloom. I thought she wanted only me.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Arrogance leads us to make many mistakes. She didn’t want me. She wanted Baronsford. And I was completely blind to it.”
Millicent wished she could somehow make this easier for him, but she could not think of a way.
“What Truscott told you about our problems was all true. When she became unreasonable, I only became worse. When she withdrew, I became suspicious. As a result, we spent most of our marriage apart. When she was in London or Bath or Bristol, I made sure I was at Baronsford. When she came here with her frends, I would spend the time in the Highlands. And as great a fool as I was, despite all of our difficulties, our mockery of marriage remained tolerable so long as Emma would not disgrace us publicly.”
Lyon’s gaze turned to Millicent. “Because of Emma, my brothers began to hate me. Pierce and David and I grew further and further apart. But that wasn’t enough, so she began to hint at affairs. And then she would question my honor. My manhood. And she would expect me to act on it.”
“And you did.”
“I was a fool. I think she hoped I would die in one of those duels. Instead, even greater fools than I had to die.”
Millicent thought that it was a miracle that Lyon had lived through t
hose times. She pressed her lips against his heart.
“The day she died—the day of the accident—I should have known she was up to something.”
“But Walter said everyone was at Baronsford because of the dowager’s birthday.”
“All of our families were there at Baronsford. Over two hundred guests were arriving for the ball in my mother’s honor, but that was just an excuse to have us all there,” he said quietly. “She had an announcement that required a worthy audience.”
“What was her announcement?”
Lyon’s eyes were hard when they turned to her. “She wanted a divorce.”
Millicent felt herself go cold.
“The greatest scandal she could create, and a public announcement to disseminate the news. Emma wanted to have the sympathetic ears of everyone who admired and loved her when she announced why she could no longer tolerate being married to me.”
Millicent thought of her own divorce request to the dowager and Sir Richard before marrying Lyon. But that had been under very different circumstances.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I told her no, though not in so calm a fashion. We fought, and she told me she would do as she wished. She was going to make the announcement, and I could live with the scandal of it. And then she ran away.”
“And you went after her.”
“Not at first. I told myself this was all just another ploy. That she was playing with me like a toy soldier. That she would never do such a thing, and I was not going to rise to her bait. And then I came downstairs and ran into Pierce.”
“He talked you into going after her?”
“Not exactly. He was angry because he had seen Emma upset, running away in the direction of the cliffs. He started lecturing me again on how I did not treat her well, and how I was undeserving of her love. He asked me how I could upset her so, considering her condition.”
“Her condition?”
“Pierce told me that Emma was pregnant. She told him that she and I were going to make an announcement about it that night.”
02 - Borrowed Dreams Page 31