The Viscount's Unconventional Bride

by Mary Nichols

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Her voice was no more than a whisper. He had twice called her sweetheart. It meant nothing to him, of course, but to her it was breathtaking. Shattering. She loved him, had recognised the fact several days before, even as she realised nothing could come of it. He was a Viscount and Viscounts did not marry women like her. She was a nobody, more of a nobody that most, since she did not know who she really was, but here she was wishing and longing and knowing it could not be. If she were not shaking so much, she would get up and go back, but to do that she had to negotiate that ledge again. She shuddered at the prospect.

  ‘You are cold.’ He took off his coat and draped it round her shoulders, holding it there with his hand. ‘Why were you so afraid? It did not occur to me you would be or I would not have taken you that way. The ledge was wide enough to walk along…’

  ‘I know.’ She paused, trying to put aside thoughts of an impossible love to try and answer him. ‘I was perfectly happy about it until I reached the middle and then it was as if a giant hand came out and pushed against my chest, snatching my breath away. I could not go on. Something made me shake so much my legs would not support me and I was afraid of crumpling down and pitching over the edge. It was a strange sensation. It seemed to come from the air around me, not from something inside me. It was as if something or someone were holding me back, that going on was dangerous.’ She paused and looked up at him. ‘I am not making much sense, am I?’

  ‘No.’ Even talking nonsense, especially talking nonsense, she tore at his heart. This quest of hers was affecting her in so many ways. Affecting them both and that was not something he had bar gained for when he set out.

  ‘Must we go back that way?’

  ‘No. Do you remember Mrs Winter said we could go over the summit from the inn to Moresdale? We can find our way back that way.’

  ‘Was it a warning, do you think? A warning not to meddle with the past? Or the future?’

  ‘Ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night?’ he queried, smiling at her. ‘I would never have thought of you as someone given to flights of fancy like that. What has happened to the young stripling who led me such a dance all the way from Baldock to York? He feared nothing.’

  ‘He was too stupid to feel fear, too stupid to know when he was well off.’

  ‘You mean you want to go home to Barnet? We could, you know. We could leave this place to its secrets.’

  ‘And then it would be fear that drove me away, fear of the truth.’ She paused to look up at his dear face. He was looking down at her, his expression full of concern, and she wished it did not hurt so much. ‘Papa always used to say, one should never be afraid of the truth. Perhaps that is why he thought I should be told it.’

  She was not the only one afraid of the truth. He feared it too. He was afraid it would hurt her, that she would find she was, in clerical parlance, baseborn. If she was hurt, so was he. How to mitigate that, he did not know. ‘So, in spite of what you think are messages from goodness knows where, you will not give up?’

  ‘No.’

  He stood up and took her hand to help her to her feet. ‘Then let us go back to the Shepherd’s Crook, have some dinner and, if you feel up to it, dress up for the country dance, and see what tomorrow brings.’

  It was a fair walk over the brow of the hill and down the other side and he was afraid he had tired her, but she seemed to have discovered an extra burst of energy from somewhere, which he correctly surmised was nervous in origin, though he said nothing. He knew that, when it was spent, she would flop with exhaustion.

  Joe and Betty were already at the inn and wondering what had happened to them. They explained that they had decided to walk back over Moresdale Hill. Neither she nor Jonathan said anything about her sudden fright. They retired to their rooms to change ready for dinner and the evening’s dance.

  Louise wore the green silk dress Jonathan had bought in Doncaster which suited her so well, and Betty arranged her hair for her. She returned the service for Betty, who was dressed in pink-and-white stripes, decorated with pink bows. The girl chatted excitedly. She had never been to a dance before and her conversation was dotted with references to Joe. There was definitely a romance blossoming there and Louise found herself envying the girl her uncomplicated happiness.

  They made their way down to the parlour where the men waited, also suitably dressed. Jonathan had reverted to being a Viscount, dressing in a plum-coloured suit of clothes, decorated with silver braid. His rose-coloured waistcoat was embroidered with silver thread and his matching breeches were held below the knee with rose-coloured ribbon. He wore white stockings and black shoes with silver buckles and high heels. Without a wig, his hair had been care fully arranged in curls on each side and the back held with a large black bow. Louise, giving him a deep curtsy, wondered why he had dressed himself up for a simple country dance.

  Joe, though more plainly dressed, was smarter than they had ever seen him before, not quite the gentleman of course, but someone out to impress his lady love. They moved into the dining room where Mrs and Mrs Winter waited on them, before joining them at the table.

  ‘Did you enjoy the fair?’ Mrs Winter asked them.

  ‘Yes, very much,’ Louise said. ‘There was so much going on.’

  ‘It has been an annual event at Moresdale for as long as I can remember,’ the woman went on. ‘When I was young, it was always opened by the Earl and the Countess, her that is the Dowager now, of course. They would stop and visit every stall and talk to everybody. They even had a go at the skittles and bought things from the stalls. Sometimes they would come down in the evening and lead the dancing for a few minutes. People liked that. When the old Earl died, the new Earl and his wife kept up the custom for a few years, but that stopped when their little boy, Thomas, died. Only five years old, he was.’

  ‘He died?’ Louise echoed, recalling her sudden memory of the child between his parents when she visited the church. He had seemed about five years old. Was that why that particular scene had come back into her mind? It was the last time she had seen him before his death. She shivered.

  ‘Yes. Tragedy it was. He wandered out of the grounds on his own and climbed Moresdale Hill.’ She nodded her head in the direction of the slope behind the inn. ‘He fell to his death off the ledge. You must have come by it if you came back that way.’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ Jonathan said, looking at Louise, who seemed to have been struck dumb. Her face had lost all its colour.

  ‘’Tis said the place is haunted by the child’s ghost,’ the landlady went on blithely, unaware of the disturbance she was causing. ‘Can you wonder it sent his poor mama out of her mind?’

  ‘No,’ Louise whispered, perfectly prepared to believe in the ghost, for something had stopped her up on that ledge.

  ‘What became of the Countess?’ Jonathan asked

  ‘We were told she had to go away for her health’s sake.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘There was a rumour that she flung herself off that same cliff,’ Mr Winter put in.

  ‘Well, I do not believe that,’ the good lady said, ignoring Louise’s cry of distress. ‘They would have had to bring the body down, same as they did when they found the little boy, and they couldn’t do that without someone seeing it, not when the whole village was full of the boy’s death. Besides, there was no funeral service, no grave stone. She didn’t die. She’s alive somewhere.’

  ‘A recluse at the hall, perhaps,’ Jonathan suggested.

  ‘Recluse. Does that mean she don’t go out much?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he said.

  ‘Could be,’ she agreed. ‘It would account for the Dowager being the one to open the fair.’

  ‘She didn’t stay long,’ Betty ventured.

  ‘No, well, she’s a bit strange too.’

  ‘Where was the Earl when this happened?’ Jonathan asked, reaching for Louise’s hand beneath the tablecloth and giving it a squeeze of re
assurance. ‘He must have taken his son’s death hard.’

  ‘He was away in Scotland with his militia, fighting Bonnie Prince Charlie. Came back to find Thomas already cold in his grave. Until then he had been a reason able sort of gentleman. It changed him.’

  ‘Did…did they have other children?’ Louise asked, her heart in her throat. She had stopped eating, knowing food would choke her.

  ‘No, he was the only one and he came late. The apple of his father’s eye.’

  ‘How very sad.’ It was hard to keep asking questions, but this was the nearest she had yet come to having any answered. ‘Does that mean there is no heir?

  ‘Don’t seem to be.’

  ‘Surely the Earl has brothers and sisters, cousins perhaps…’ Louise was clutching at straws.

  Mrs Winter shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard of. That’s not to say there aren’t any. But if there are, they don’t live hereabouts.’

  ‘They would find the place sadly neglected,’ Mr Winter said, helping himself to more meat pie. ‘No one cares any more. Except Hamish Mackay. He’s like a bodyguard. No one gets past him.’

  Louise risked a glance at Jonathan. He smiled at her, trying to cheer her, but he knew what she was thinking, as plainly as if she had said it aloud. ‘What is the Countess’s given name?’ he asked.

  ‘The Dowager? Goodness knows, I don’t.’

  ‘No, I meant the young Countess.’

  ‘Don’t know that I recall it. Something beginning with C. Caroline…Charlotte… No, I remember now, it’s Catherine.’ She paused. ‘You are not eating. Have some more meat pie.’

  Unable to speak, Louise mutely shook her head. Jonathan declined politely. ‘It was delicious,’ he said. ‘But we will not be able to dance if we eat any more.’

  Louise did not feel at all like dancing. She wanted to go away on her own and think. She had come to Moresdale to discover the truth. Had she learned some of it today or was it all a smokescreen? She excused herself and left the table, wandering out of the inn to stand staring up at the hill. Over the brow of that, lying in the next valley, was Moresdale.

  Jonathan joined her. ‘Joe is harnessing the horses,’ he said, standing beside her, but not touching her. She seemed brittle, fragile as precious china, ready to break.

  ‘I cannot go.’

  ‘Yes, you can. If you stay here, you will only brood and brooding will not help.’

  ‘The Countess’s name is Catherine,’ she said dully.

  ‘Is is a common enough name. And Mrs Winter said they had no more children.’

  ‘How can she know that? It would be easy enough to conceal a birth in a secluded place like the Hall.’

  ‘But, Louise, why would she want to?’

  ‘I do not know, do I?’

  ‘But if my calculations are correct, the little boy was the same age as you. Unless you were twins, you could not be her child.’

  ‘Twins?’

  ‘Yes, but unlikely, wouldn’t you say? Keeping one child and giving away the other, especially when they had no others, is hard to credit. No, sweetheart, I think you are barking up the wrong tree,’ he said.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ There was faint hope in her voice.

  ‘Yes.’ He took her hand. ‘Come, let us go to the dance with Joe and Betty. We cannot spoil their evening and it will spoil it if we do not go.’

  ‘You can still go.’

  ‘Not without you. I stay by your side whatever happens.’

  She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You may come to regret that.’

  He grinned. ‘Perhaps. But not tonight.’

  She allowed herself to be drawn back to the inn, where Betty and Joe waited. ‘Hurry up,’ Betty said. ‘I don’t want to miss any of it.’

  Joe offered her his arm, making her giggle. Jonathan and Louise followed them out to the carriage, which Joe was to drive. In her finery Betty could not climb up beside him, which she would have liked to do, and so got in with Jonathan and Louise, leaving them unable to continue their discussion, even had they wanted to. There seemed nothing more to say. The mystery was as deep as ever it was.

  ‘Did you find your relation?’ Betty asked Louise as they bowled along.

  ‘Not yet. Tomorrow, perhaps.’

  ‘The crowds will leave tomorrow. It will be easier.’

  ‘Yes,’ Louise agreed.

  If Betty thought she was being particularly unforthcoming, she did not comment; she was becoming used to her friend’s secretiveness. Nor did it occur to her to connect Louise’s search for her relative with the story they had heard over dinner.

  The dance was to be held on the green, there being no hall large enough in the village. Lanterns had been strung all round it and a dais constructed of straw bales on which a fiddler and a piper played. Everyone was dressed in their best, though Jonathan attracted some stares, being a cut above everyone else on the social scale. He did not seem to mind and pulled Louise into the dancing with boyish enthusiasm. ‘Tonight we enjoy ourselves,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Tonight is for us. We will let tomorrow take care of itself.’

  He was as good as his word. The dance was a boisterous affair, with no ceremony whatsoever, and in the end Louise began to relax a little. Whatever was to be would be and he was right—tomorrow was time enough to think of what to do next. Determinedly she put her worries to one side to make the most of the music and the revelry, the starry moonlit night and the plentiful supply of ale and punch, the feel of his hands holding hers as they danced, his smiling countenance as he looked down at her, knowing it would be gone tomorrow, like dandelion seed on a puff of wind, only to be recalled with poignant nostalgia in later years.

  It was gone midnight when they tumbled into the carriage for the return journey. Joe had partaken liberally and the ride was not without its bumps, but the horses seemed to know the way to their stables and they arrived without mishap.

  Leaving Joe to put the horses away and take himself off to his own bed in the loft above them, the other three crept past the parlour where they knew Mr and Mrs Winter were sleeping and made their way as silently as possible up the stairs to their rooms, not bothering with candles. Betty went into their room, leaving Jonathan and Louise standing together on the landing facing each other, reluctant to say goodnight.

  The window was uncurtained and the landing was half-lit with moonlight. They did not speak for several seconds, simply stood and searched each other’s faces. In the moon light they were pale, but their eyes were bright, hers more than his, because they were filling with tears. This love of hers could never have a happy outcome and yet she could not bear to part from him. ‘Thank you for tonight,’ she whispered at last. ‘I shall always remember it.’

  ‘The pleasure was all mine.’

  ‘It is tomorrow already,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you could say that.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jonathan.’

  ‘Goodnight, my love.’ He reached out and cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her lips. And then he was gone along the corridor to his own room.

  She turned and went into her own room and undressed, flinging her clothes off anyhow and scrambling in beside Betty, where she lay sleepless, trying not to let her bed mate hear her crying.

  In spite of the late night, she woke early. Betty still slept and would do until noon, Louise guessed. She crept from the bed, washed and dressed in the blue muslin. Brushing her hair and tying it back, she put on a wide-brimmed straw hat and tied it beneath her chin with a blue ribbon. Then she crept from the room, down the stairs and out of the house. She had told Jonathan this was something she had to do alone and she had meant it.

  The sun was barely up, but she had a long walk ahead of her and set out resolutely. Unwilling to go past that fearful cliff on the hill path, she took the road to Moresdale. People were busy in the village when she arrived, dismantling the stalls and taking down the dais and the decorations. She did not linger, but carried on past the green and up the lane to Moresdale Hal
l. Following a high wall, she came upon the entrance gates quite suddenly. They were closed. Beside them was a small door in the wall, meant for pedestrians. Taking her courage in her hands, she pushed this open and ventured inside.

  Before her was a narrow drive hung over so closely by trees it was like a dark tunnel. There were trees everywhere, growing so densely they barely allowed the light to filter through. Beneath them the underground was dense with brambles, elder and young saplings. She shivered and took a few paces forwards. Somewhere ahead of her was the house, but what she meant to do when she reached it, she had not decided. She ought to think about it, rehearse what she would say. She could not say outright, ‘I believe I am your granddaughter.’ Besides, it might not be true. Jonathan could be right. Did she want it to be true? She was ambivalent about that. It might be the end of her search, but did she want to be related to so tragic a family? Had little Thomas’s ghost been warning her not to go on? But could she go back to Chipping Barnet not knowing? Could she resume her old life, as if she had never made this fateful journey? She knew she could not. She took a deep breath and went on, though she could not see the house.

  There would servants, butler, footmen, parlourmaids and that giant of a man she had seen at the Fair, Hamish Mackay, Mrs Winter had called him. She would have to get past them to reach the Countess. Was it the Dowager she wanted or her daughter-in-law? But if rumour were to be believed, the younger woman was not there. Unless she was being held prisoner. Her imagination ran wild.

  She heard them first, the baying of dogs, and then they were in front of her, six huge wolfhounds, standing in the road, blocking her path, barking furiously. There was no passing them and nowhere to go but backwards. Something told her that it would be fatal to run. She forced herself to stand still. For several seconds they stared at each other. She ventured a tiny step backwards and they came forwards barking again. She stopped.