“Stay there, George. Just stay.”
Best to get to the chapel. Prepare. Hope he did not smell like George when he got there!
He glanced at his ancient wooden wall clock. One minute more and the crazy rooster would pop out of his coop and croak like a frog on the hour. Nine o’clock. Time to go.
Charlie smoothed his wrinkled stole around his neck and grabbed his hat. Pocketing his own time piece in his waistcoat beneath his robe, he wondered what else he might do for George.
Douse him with well water?
Serve him right. But it’d be cruel, too. He couldn’t do it.
He carefully shut the door to his cottage and burst into a jog along the lane toward the church. Doffing his hat to two ladies who headed the same way, he passed them hoping the morning breezes would chase away any aromas of gin…and George’s sad condition.
Those on this path were from the village or from the Courtland farms. They curtsied to him or pulled their forelocks, though they needn’t. He’d oft told them not to pay him such obeisance, but they knew he was a duke’s son. And social strictures died hard.
He bore the burden of those rules himself. Confound it! Money, position and power. A lethal combination.
He slowed and composed himself as he should. “And it’s not like any of that can save one from the lure of drink or the human sorrow and disappointment.”
Stop that, Compton! It’s a wedding you go to!
He’d devised his message this morning to scour the topic of money and position as roots of despair. If he could, he’d burn it into the congregation that their focus on money and land and inherited snobbery made so many the poorer.
He snorted and shook his head. If they heard his words, had they the strength to turn his message to their benefit?
He paused in the middle of the lane.
For the first time since he’d resolved to escape his lot, the first time since he’d been refused the hand of the charming Willa Sheffield, Charlie doubted he had the ability to break free. He could write for years and still find himself scraping by, trying to feed his wife and, God help him, any children they might conceive. He’d rather starve alone than thrust malnutrition, illness and the helplessness of poverty on the woman he loved or any sons or daughters of their union. After all, lack of coin could kill not just the body, but the spirit. He saw daily how it destroyed love. George Billoughby’s wife and his children were as much proof as George himself.
“Good day, Vicar!” Three more of the tenant farmers’ wives greeted him as they came abreast of him and headed toward the chapel. “A fine day for love, would ye not say?”
“Every day is,” he said, but he no longer believed it. As Wills had said yesterday, even love cannot cure all ills.
* * *
The seats were full inside the tiny stone chapel. The sun beamed through the two stained glass lancet windows over the altar. The church, built countless centuries ago was jammed with guests of the Courtlands and parishioners. They sat, elbow to elbow, in the gnarly wooden pews. In one row, Willa sat with her closest friends. She looked ever so lovely this morning in pink and rose. He loved her in that. In anything.
He cleared his throat. Not the best thing to lust for a woman in one’s own church!
He scanned the group of women who sat with Wills. A lovely group of school chums, most of whom were not yet married. Fine young women who deserved loving husbands. They sat, patient, whispering to each other and smiling in anticipation of Esme’s nuptials.
Charlie checked his timepiece. Ten past nine.
Those in the pews glanced sideways at each other with increasing frequency.
Most women he had married here in this church were willing and eager. But Esme was not. Nor did she appear.
Charlie dug out his timepiece. Fifteen after nine. No Esme.
One well-dressed gentleman, to whom Charlie had been introduced last night, put his monocle to his left eye and cocked his head at him. Asking—was he?—where the bride could be.
As if I know!
But he winced. Perhaps he did. ‘Not here’ was the truest answer he had. And ‘not here’ because Esme feared for her integrity and that of those she loved.
Charlie’s gaze tripped over the feathers and ribbons of a dozen ladies’ bonnets. His gaze found Wills.
She focused on him with the wide-eyed look of an owl on watch. Her lips parted. “Where?” she mouthed.
He frowned in answer.
She shook her head once and looked down into her lap. Wills had agreed with Esme’s rationale. While he did too, he expected Esme would ignore her scruples and appear here. Because it is what is expected.
Just as he had. And he’d failed. Oh, certainly, he could continue to write articles and give lectures, couldn’t he? He could write a few more books. But the remuneration from all of that was tiny and pitifully slow to come. He could also hope for a promotion to a larger parish. But so many men, home from the wars and without work, looked to the church for employment. Truth was, a man with a good education could study and apply to the church. Abundance of faith was not necessarily the first qualification to become Anglican clergy. All of his efforts could take years. Decades. He could be an old man before he had the financial means and social standing to go to Wills and ask her to wed him.
He would continue to fail not because he would not work diligently for good of his charges, but because he was not called to saving souls. He was called to saving people here on earth. He must do that! That! And in the process save himself.
He swallowed his outrage. His cynicism.
The congregation grew restless.
He checked his timepiece again. Half nine!
Whispers rose, like a buzz of bees in the air. Ladies fanned themselves, their exasperation growing as high as the air they stirred. Gentlemen asked questions of their wives and daughters—and were less constrained than their feminine relatives in response. They snorted and gruffed, complaining in a rising chorus.
One lady sneezed.
A gentleman coughed.
A stab of painful realization hit Charlie. He fingered his Bible. “Suppose I read the passage about the wedding at Cana? Yes, yes. A good story."
He fumbled through his book and found instead another story that to him was definitely more fitting.
He began to read the long passage that told of the day that Jesus had called forth a friend from his tomb. “Though Lazarus had been dead four days, Jesus made him live again.”
But as the words left his lips, those in the church murmured their bewilderment.
“Mama,” said one young girl, “why is he reading that?”
What he heard of that lady’s response was only one word, “Hope.”
But he had none any longer that Esme was on her way.
A breeze swept the chapel.
A hush dropped over them all.
“About time!” someone complained.
The congregation turned as one toward a figure.
Lord Courtland stood upon the threshold. He stared at them, his complexion pale as death, his eyes rimmed in red. A handsome older man, he licked his lips and thrust his arms wide, hands to the pillars as if he needed the old columns to hold him up.
With a groan, he lumbered to the front. He approached Charlie and spun to face those in the pews. His grey hair ruffled, his stock undone, he was a rumpled mess. "My dear family and friends, I regret to inform you we will have no wedding today.”
A gasp went up from the throng.
A few men jumped to their feet.
One muttered a phrase not usually heard in these walls.
Lord Courtland muttered more apologies. Then he disappeared as quickly as he’d come.
Charlie stared after him. But a question in his head repeated, “What will you do for love?”
* * *
Wills was the first to reach the house. The wedding guests lingered at the church. If they hoped Esme would appear, they did so in vain.
As triumphant
as Wills was for Esme’s success, she felt gutted too, for her friend’s sadness. For Esme loved her fiancé, the honorable Marquess of Northington, and now they had no hope of living in joy together for the rest of their days.
Why is it that we cannot wed whom we wish?
She picked up her skirts and charged up the main stairs. No one approached her. The Courtland staff had stood at the rear of the church to see their young Miss Harvey marry the man of her dreams. They too had not returned to the Hall in any haste.
She swung wide the door to her suite and searched for her maid. “Mary?”
But got no answer.
Good. The girl was not here, but most likely also at the chapel. Wills would take the opportunity to leave the clothes she’d no longer need in the wall closet in her toilette. Planned that, she had, hoping to be assigned this suite of rooms she knew so well from staying here years’ past. Leaving a few frothy gowns behind where they’d not be found for days was the only way to travel with any speed.
Chapter 12
Charlie crushed the letter in his hand and threw it in the fire. “How dare the man!”
But of course, the Earl de Courcy dared anything. But to suggest that he had caused Willa to disappear from this earth? Was he mad?
“I am!” What a fool! If he ever saw the earl again, he would throttle him for being such a bully that his daughter had to take to subterfuge to escape from them all!
Someone banging on his cottage door had him stifling his curses. When he pulled it open, he was agape.
Viscount Courtland stood there, his eyes wide, his hair ruffled, no hat, no coat, a missive held aloft in one hand. “De Courcy!”
Charlie scowled. “You have a letter from him, too?”
“I do. Arrogant bastard!”
Charlie ran a weary hand through his hair and stood aside. “Do come in, my lord.”
Courtland entered but did not sit. Like Charlie, he paced before the fire. “What the hell is happening with women that they all want to disappear?”
Charlie had a good idea what most women wanted. It was not what they currently had. Controlling fathers, no standing, no rights to property or money or even their own children. “Willa was unhappy, sir. Her father wished to force her to marry in the new year.”
“Well, it matters not, it seems, whether a woman is to wed the man she wants or not! She flees any and all whom she knows!”
Two days and nights had passed since Courtland’s daughter, Esme, had run from her own wedding. Taken a horse and fled in the middle of the night, it seemed. Courtland had set out himself to Bath and Esme’s favorite aunt, but had not found her there. He’d also commanded two of his servants to go to nearby towns, but they had returned with no news. Esme’s betrothed, the marquess of Northington, had sought to track her. He’d left the mansion soon after she’d disappeared and no one had heard from him.
What they knew about Wills’s disappearance was as little. That afternoon, Willa had ordered her coachman and groom up from the coach house along with her own conveyance. She’d declared to the servants in the house that she would return home. Her maid Mary finished the packing of Willa’s trunk that Willa herself had begun. And off they set.
Charlie shook his head. “De Courcy says the maid, the coachman and groom arrived at De Courcy Manor late Thursday evening.”
“He wrote the same to me.”
“And Willa was not with them!” He plunked his hands on his hips. “How in hell did they lose her?”
“She escaped them!” Courtland said. “How can that be? Are they that stupid?”
“Or Willa is that clever,” Charlie said.
“How did she do it? Pull the wool over their eyes? If I were De Courcy, I’d give the lot of them their notices! I’ve a mind to dismiss my own men. None of them stopped my girl.”
Charlie understood the viscount’s fury. “She told them she was going for a wee ride.”
Courtland sighed and sank into one of Charlie’s chairs. “What do we do now? Two missing women!”
“The Runner you hire will find Esme, sir. I’m certain of it.” Courtland had sent to London to Bow Street to hire a special man to investigate. Given traveling time, he should arrive soon.
“He better arrive from London today. I have no hope for her otherwise. She could be abducted, held for ransom. Worse. Worse. I cannot bear it. Her mother is beside herself.”
Charlie took the other chair, his mind whirling. The disappearance of Esme worried him as much as Willa’s. He had no idea what her father was doing to find her, but he would do his best to contribute.“The De Courcys are frightened, too. They love their daughter and would want no harm to come to her.”
“But the man is too much, too much, I say, to accuse me of persuading his daughter to run away the same as mine.”
Charlie stared into the fire, the flames firing his imagination. “I agree. De Courcy must learn to tame his pompous, conceited…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t suppose that Willa has joined up with Esme to…to…” He flourished a hand.
“Why?” Courtland frowned. “Well, I don’t know. Perhaps. One runs from a man she wants. The other runs from…what, Charlie?”
“A man she doesn’t want. A life she doesn’t want.” And I made it worse for her to accept. Of that, I am not sorry. God help me.
“We have to find out what route she took,” Courtland said.
“The main road back to the Manor. Wait! Can you let me see your letter, sir, please? I threw mine in the fire.” Courtland handed it over and he read the words so similar to his own missive. “There! They stopped on the main road home at a public coach house. The Horse and Dog. Willa went in to the place and never came out!”
“Right you are. So what’s wrong with the De Courcy grooms? Would they not stay and search for her? I’d tear the place down piece by piece!”
“They did. For an hour or so, but then they left. Ahhh.” Charlie lifted a finger, then shook it at the fire. “She paid them.”
“Who?”
“The owners of the Horse and Dog.” He smiled but the satisfaction was fleeting. “She paid them, that wily girl.”
“Well, where was she when they searched for her?”
He shrugged. “In an attic? In the cellars? A wardrobe?”
“And then she waited until they tired. Waited and—”
“Off she went.” Charlie sat back.
The poor viscount was so befuddled, he slumped. “I don’t understand women.”
“A life long endeavor, it is. But if we understand just one, I think we’ve won.”
“Really?” Courtland stared at him. “My wife’s taken to her bed, you know. Cries we are the misfits of the Season. Moans, shrieks. The house sounds like a morgue or an asylum. What to do. What to do.”
“Sir,” Charlie said at length, “I’m going to have to leave for a few days.”
Courtland nodded. “Of course, you are, dear boy. You’ve been my only solace in this storm, Charlie. Well, hell. Might you have any brandy to assuage my loss of your excellent company?”
“I do, sir.” He rose to pour them both a good measure. “May I have the loan of one of your excellent mounts?”
“Absolutely. And I have a purse to fund your travels, too.”
“Thank you, sir. I do accept.”
“I have faith in you, Charlie. Find Willa.”
“I promise you I will turn Heaven and Earth to do it.”
* * *
Brighton, England
Monday, May 6, 1816
“Excuse me, please, Miss Stanley.” Her employer, Vicomtesse Grizard, was all eyes and ears for her butler’s announcement of the arrival of her guest. “I must speak with Lord Dalforth about our wedding arrangements. But I shall return to our conversation as soon as possible.”
“Of course. I will continue to order the school room while Master Robert and Master Antoine play in the garden.” Wills stepped aside and let the lady pass through to the hall.
She envied her
. Envied the young widow her poise, her lovely children, her home—and her dashing betrothed.
Wills shook her head and scolded herself for such unkind thoughts. Vicomtesse Grizard had been nothing but good to her. Since her arrival here three days ago to the coastal town of Brighton, Wills had rejoiced at the warmer, sunnier weather. More than that, she’d welcomed the friendliness of the woman who was her taskmaster and valued the ease with which they’d become acquainted.
The fact that she immediately remembered Madame as Miss Luella Parker from Miss Shipley’s School was a subject she had not broached with the lady. Shocked to recognize her the first instant she gazed upon the Vicomtesse, Wills was conflicted about bringing her recollection to her attention. To do so would require her to reveal her real name, her status, and her reason for her false declarations in her employment. She did not wish to declare she was a liar, let alone a runaway daughter of an earl who oddly sought employment as a servant.
Wills had committed herself to this woman, this job and her plan. She was to be governess to the lady’s two young sons, ages six and seven, and in particular to focus on developing their French language skills. As sons of the deceased emigre of France Andre Louis DuPre, Vicomte Grizard, Robert and Antoine had been invited by the restored Bourbon King Louis XVIII to reclaim their father’s lands in Belmont, north of Lyon. But the man’s widow, the Vicomtesse, was English. She feared for her sons’ lives should the French decide to revolt once again and rid themselves of any and all aristocrats. However, the lady’s most important reason for remaining in England was her recent decision to accept the proposal of the English Viscount Dalforth.
At the sound of the boys’ laughter, Wills went to the tall windows overlooking Madame’s lush rose garden. The weather, so unusually cool this spring, had not yet encouraged many buds to blossom. But the garden, shielded from the harsh winds off the Channel by the stately height and breadth of the townhouse, had sprung forth with abundant greenery. Flowers would surely bloom here this year.
Lady Willa’s Divinely Wicked Vicar: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 4 Page 12