Casting caution to the wind, she called out and began to run down the rock-strewn slope toward him. “Sir! Sir! Pray stop! You will be in the bog!”
She tore off her bonnet and waved it wildly in one hand as she ran. He must notice her! With an extra burst of effort, she managed to reach the track just as the gray spun around a bend toward her. There was a little slope of short grass just above the muddy path, and as the heel of her boot struck it, her feet went from under her, so that she sprawled onto the track at the very feet of the horse. The Thoroughbred reared, giving her an uncomfortable view of his iron-shod hooves, but the rider expertly spun him away and pulled him to a halt just three feet from her shoulder.
“Good God, you little idiot! Whatever do you think you’re doing?”
Catherine sat up and tried to regain some sense of dignity. She was displaying an unconscionable length of white petticoat and silk stocking, now splattered with mud. She had never felt herself to be at such an awkward disadvantage.
“You’re a stranger here, sir. This track is dangerous and I thought to warn you.”
“The only danger is caused by your impetuous and unnecessary interference. You could have been killed.”
The tanned face that looked down at her seemed carved from stone. Brilliant green eyes under straight black brows gazed directly into her face, but he made no move to help her.
She stared back up at him. Really, he had the longest black eyelashes she had ever seen on a man!
“I think you might dismount and offer me some assistance.”
His face was instantly transformed by a charming smile. “You seem to be unhurt and able to regain your feet by yourself,” he said lightly. “My close proximity is usually considered perilous to unchaperoned young ladies.”
“What?” she shot back without thinking. “Do you make a habit of ravishing any female that crosses your path?” She struggled to her feet. She had entirely smashed her straw bonnet when she fell, so she was unable to put it back on. Instead, she thrust it behind her. There was a smear of green right down the side of her muslin skirt, and one of the flounces was torn.
He raised an eyebrow and the emerald gaze swept over her in the most insolent manner. “Only those who are capable of displaying some feminine charm, alas, not a hoyden who flings herself at my feet like some screaming dervish.”
“I am not a dervish.” Catherine became uncomfortably aware that this was not at all a proper conversation for her to be having with a stranger. She attempted to return to safer ground. “The moor is full of hidden traps for a horseman. The bogs cannot be seen until you are in them. You might thank me for my efforts.”
“Cassandra also received no thanks for her warnings of doom.”
“Like Cassandra, I am only trying to save you from disaster.”
With a grim laugh he turned his mount away from her. “I may need saving, young lady, but not from the hazards of riding a horse. Good day!”
With that, he touched his horse with his leg and the gray bounded away, leaving Catherine standing speechless with anger on the path. What an insufferably rude and arrogant man! Well, he was probably no more than some officer passing through on his return from France. England was full of retired soldiers now that Napoleon was safely imprisoned on Elba. Nevertheless, he should not get away with the parting shot.
“I hope you drown in Rye Combe Bog!” she shouted at the retreating back.
Chapter 2
Lion Court was a pleasant, ivy-covered edifice that had been, at the time of Good Queen Bess, the home of a wealthy wool merchant. The house, solidly built of the local stone, enclosed three sides of a courtyard and presided over several topiary box bushes like a hen with her chicks. The stone lions which had given the house its name had weathered and crumbled until they had the rounded, toothless look of pug dog puppies, begging.
Catherine loved the place. To the north she could just catch a glimpse of the sea in the Bristol Channel, with the hills of Wales faintly shadowing the horizon. To the south rose the purple tops of Exmoor, home to wild ponies and red deer. Out of sight to the west lay the whitewashed village and church of Fernbridge by its pebbled beach, where her father had his living. And, a little farther along the coast, stood small, elegant Stagshead, set back from the road in its ancient grounds: the home of Captain David Morris who, returning from the Peninsular Campaign when Napoleon was defeated, had come into his inheritance and won her sister’s heart.
Up behind Lion Court marched woods of beech and oak, ash and birch, and below and through them, like a slash in a bread loaf, tumbled Rye Water, carrying the rain from the moor to the sea. The stretch of Rye Water which ran past the house had been tamed with plantings and little iron railings. There was an artificial grotto with a marble nymph forever pouring water from an urn, where she and Amelia had been caught trespassing as children. Within half a mile upstream of the curved ornamental bridge and the water lilies, however, the stream coursed wild through its craggy little gorge, full of mosses and light-shading ferns, from the boggy heights of Eagle Beacon. And at one place, below the stables and barns, past the birch spinney, Rye Water emptied into the pleasant leaf-shaded lake where poor Millicent Trumble had been found drowned seven years before.
Lady Montagu was not elderly, perhaps only fifty-six or seven, but she was bored and faint-hearted. Catherine read to her in the evenings, or played hour upon hour at the piano and sang. In the day she would accompany her mistress in little drives in a dog cart, or on sketching expeditions around the estate, or perhaps just fetch and carry, while Lady Montagu worked listlessly at embroidery or drawn-thread work.
The house and grounds entranced her. It was an old-fashioned house, full of interesting nooks and crannies. Over the centuries, various owners had carried out their improvement schemes, so that the withdrawing and dining rooms boasted beautiful Jacobean plaster ceilings, while the great hall downstairs still displayed its massive Tudor beams, curving away into the roof space. There was an eclectic collection of furnishings, representing much of the past two hundred years, but each piece settled in next to its neighbor in complete harmony. It seemed to Catherine that the house had always been loved by its occupants, except perhaps by Sir Henry Montagu. No one could claim that the atmosphere had been happy after he had moved in with his family—what?—seventeen years ago. Even now that he was gone the lovely rooms still seemed forlorn and sad. The house must once have resounded to the laughter of large families and good fellowship. Even though Sir Henry had been dead for over a year, it was as if the Queen Anne dressers and Persian carpets still couldn’t quite shake off his baleful influence.
* * * *
Catherine had been at Lion Court for less than a week, when one afternoon she heard the rattle of a large carriage as it pulled into the courtyard, accompanied by outriders and followed by a baggage cart. She and Lady Montagu had just come in from a walk on the terrace, past the glorious display of flowers in the gardens, and Catherine had walked upstairs to remove her bonnet. From the head of the stairs, she heard loud voices and squeals of feminine delight, followed by the gruff tones of a man.
“By the Devil, don’t take on so, Mama! You’ll bring on palpitations. Anyone would think you hadn’t seen me in years. Deuced miserable journey, rained all the way from London to Bath. Dashed if I wasn’t ready to turn around more than once, but Charlotte wouldn’t hear of it.”
A tall, thin lady who could only be the widowed Mrs. Clay pecked Lady Montagu on the cheek.
“George is the most impossible traveling companion, Mama. I declare he takes a delight in discomfort and complaint. Dear Mr. Clay was always so proficient in arranging everything to one’s satisfaction when traveling.”
“Good God, Charlotte! If I hear one more word about your sainted husband, I shall go mad. Dear Mr. Clay this, beloved Mr. Clay that! It’s enough to send a fellow to perdition, and damme if the chap hasn’t been dead these seven years and was a dreadful dull stick when he was alive.”
An att
ack of the vapors was the only possible response to that, so Catherine decided that it was an opportune moment to make herself known. She moved down the stairs and approached the little group. Charlotte Clay had begun to gasp and clutch at her throat, but at the interruption, she immediately swung around and peered at Catherine through her quizzing glass.
“So this is your companion from the vicarage, Mama? How quaint! Of course I should see hiring a female companion as an affront to the memory of dear Mr. Clay, the only true soulmate I shall have in this life. How do you do, Miss Hunter? I declare you quite tower over Lady Montagu, and that is not a flattering gown. But don’t mind me! I believe in plain speaking; Mr. Clay always advised plain speaking.”
With another absent peck at her mother’s cheek, Charlotte Clay swept away up the stairs to her room.
Catherine fought to keep a straight face. Charlotte was ten years her brother’s senior, so perhaps they could not expect to be particularly close. And, as Reverend Hunter had explained, Charlotte had, to the dismay of her parents, run away to be married at the tender age of seventeen, three years before the family had come to live at Lion Court. That Mr. Clay had unexpectedly inherited a great deal of money must have done much to soothe the ruffled feelings of Sir Henry and Lady Montagu, and then when he had shown the good grace to die and leave his wife the fortune, the fact that their only daughter had eloped was entirely forgotten.
Thus Charlotte Clay had her own establishment in London, where she was able to enjoy the giddy life of the beau monde as a respectable childless widow, past the age, at thirty-seven, of being expected to compete in the marriage mart. Sir George, on the contrary, was still entirely dependent on his grandfather for his allowance. Obviously, the difference grated.
“Dang me if it ain’t a trial to have an older sister! Charlotte would stop at Bath to visit grandfather. Old Percy must be eighty if he’s a day, and he was having the worst attack of the gout. Just about had his manservant throw us out. Been taking the waters, he said, and didn’t need a lot of money-grubbing relatives trying to hurry him into his grave. He may be your father, Mama, but he’s a damned old curmudgeon.”
Lady Montagu, who had been clinging all this time to her son’s arm, was being shaken off, none too gently, so she released him and straightened her cap. “Yes, well, apart from Charlotte, we are all dependent on him for everything. He was very overset about what happened with Dagonet, you know. I’m surprised it didn’t kill him when he struck your cousin from the will. You know Dagonet was always Papa’s favorite and Lion Court was always expected to go to him, just as my sister was his favorite when we were girls. But the marquis has left you his fortune now and makes you the most generous allowance; it is only right that you should pay him your respects.”
“Well, Charlotte would bore on to Grandfather about Mr. Clay until I thought he would strike me from the will there and then. And she had to indulge in a fit of plain speaking about his drinking too much port. I thought the old miser would have apoplexy. Say, isn’t there anywhere a fellow can get a drink in this house?”
Lady Montagu instantly, and with a touching solicitation, began to shepherd her son toward the drawing room.
Catherine tactfully began to make her escape, when for no reason she could name, George’s next remark made her stop, her pulse suddenly unsteady.
“Actually it’s because of Devil Dagonet that Charlotte and I decided to come down, Mama. Now that the war’s over, he can’t make a living as a soldier anymore. I heard he’s already been seen in England. Now, don’t turn vaporish! I’ve prepared a suitable reception should he dare to show his face here at Lion Court.”
* * * *
Sir George and Charlotte were, of course, expected. Catherine had helped prepare for their visit, principally by running up and downstairs with the housekeeper and seeing to everything herself while her mistress lay prostrate with expectation on the drawing room couch. Sir George was to occupy the room he had used as a child, and Charlotte the best blue guest chamber. They were both handsome rooms in the most modern wing with large marble fireplaces and sweeping views of the grounds.
Catherine was not sure why, when she had been standing with the housekeeper in the gracious hallway before Sir George’s bedroom door, she had suddenly said, “Where did Charles de Dagonet have his room? I see no other suitable bedchamber in this wing.”
It had already struck her that there was not a single portrait of the reprobate’s family on display in the house. Until Sir George’s arrival, the name of Devil Dagonet had not been mentioned, nor did Lady Montagu ever talk about her deceased sister. One would think that the de Dagonet family had never lived there.
“No, ma’am,” the housekeeper replied. “After the Montagus moved in, Sir George—Master George as he was then—took his cousin’s room and young Master Charles moved up over there.”
And why had she then gone where the housekeeper pointed, up the winding stair and along the balcony that ran around the library into the little chamber that the orphaned boy had taken after the arrival of his relatives at Lion Court, and which he had left, ten years later, in such disgrace?
The room was an oddity, tucked in below the roof and above the entrance hall, and Spartan in its furnishings. It commanded views of the drive in three directions from a bank of ornamental windows. It could not have been intended as a bedchamber, because there was no fireplace and in winter the little room could only have been damp and cold. Now, however, with the early September sunlight streaming in the south windows it was positively stuffy.
Catherine opened a casement. The room was not dusty. Nowhere in Lion Court escaped the efficient ministrations of its army of servants, but it couldn’t have been used since Dagonet had left. Curious, she ran her finger along the rank of books and papers above the narrow bed. There were titles in Greek and Latin, French and English. She stopped and pulled out several thin volumes. They were scores for violin, piano, harpsichord, all the great composers and some more obscure. In another notebook, songs and sonnets were set to music in a flowing hand, many she was sure, quite original. Catherine sat down.
Whatever she had expected it had not been this! It made no sense at all. He had been known as a daredevil and an athlete. ‘It must have been very hard for him,’ her mother had said. He had liked music! A misfit in this blunt household with the red-faced Sir Henry. Yet he had casually destroyed poor Milly Trumble!
What was the truth about him? How had the country people’s hero gained such a dreadful reputation? She had a sudden vision of a ten-year-old boy waiting at home for the return of his beloved parents. His face must have lit up when he heard a carriage pull into the drive at last. What a terrible blow it must have been when instead his uncle, Sir Henry Montagu, had descended with news of the fatal accident! Had it been broken to the boy with any gentleness or understanding at all? From what she knew of Sir Henry, she doubted it.
Catherine replaced everything with care and went down thoughtfully to rejoin Lady Montagu and her children.
She was to play for them all after dinner. It had been a little uncomfortable during the meal, since Lady Montagu insisted over Charlotte’s better sensibilities that her companion dine with the family. Catherine had tried to keep the peace by at least dressing as plainly and conducting herself as meekly as possible. She wore a simple green dress that was cut high to the neck and possessed only one deep flounce around the hem.
As if to emphasize their difference in social status, Charlotte was arrayed in a dazzle of jewels. Diamond pendants swung from her ears, and a matching necklace lay around her short neck above the décolletage of her puce silk. Even Lady Montagu wore a set of pearls that Catherine had never seen before, and Sir George’s elaborate neckcloth was pinned with a diamond that matched the jewel on the face of his fob.
“The necklace becomes you, Mama,” Sir George said as they all went into the drawing room and Catherine folded back the lid of the piano. “I don’t know why you didn’t think it right to wear it.”<
br />
He winked at Charlotte.
“That is such a common gesture, George! The pearls look very well, Mama, but to speak plainly they would be better suited to a younger lady. I only wish Mr. Clay might have seen me in these.” She patted the earrings. “He liked to see me wear fine gems.”
“I own I cannot really like it, George,” Lady Montagu insisted. “We really have no right, even at a family dinner.”
“Yes, just a trifle vulgar, wouldn’t you say?”
A man stepped from the shadows at the corner of the room. Power and grace stalked each long stride. The muscled limbs and broad shoulders were elegantly dressed in immaculate evening clothes, but his dark hair tumbled over his forehead. In his right hand, almost casually, he held a pistol which seemed to have an unerring attraction for Sir George’s capacious chest.
Lady Montagu uttered a small scream and sat down. Catherine quietly put down the music book and stood, her heart thudding, beside the piano.
“What the devil do you mean by this?” Sir George’s face was puce above the folds of his cravat.
The stranger moved a little farther into the candlelight. His gaze was deep green and fathomless, like the sea. It was the rider of the gray Thoroughbred.
“What, no warm welcome for the prodigal returned from the pigsty, Charlotte? And cousin George? You look as if the ghost had just appeared before you on the battlements: ‘How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale: / Is not this something more than fantasy?’ I am not the harbinger of doom, my dears, only cousin Dagonet, back from Spain. Perfectly harmless, really!”
“The servants had instructions to show you the door, sir, as a scoundrel and a blackguard, if you ever showed your face here again.”
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