I approached the Remingtons with a smile. With a distant, ladylike embrace and kiss on the cheek, we reestablished our acquaintanceship and spoke as old friends. Once again I was warmed by this couple’s unspoken affection for each other, hands brushing even as they spoke to separate people. The sight renewed my gladness that they’d come.
Soon the earl extended his arm to escort me into the dining room, and I held my breath as I always did when in close proximity with the man. Yet slipping my hand into the crook of his arm, I was surprised at the warmth my fingertips found there. What had I expected, granite?
As we marched into the long room and down the table to our seats, my nerves eased. Things were going well—I was being absorbed into this world, I’d gained a friend, I had begun helping the local tenants in real ways, and I’d soon rescue Sully.
Seated across the long table from the earl, I noticed his face had settled into stony smoothness—cold and hard, yet free of the harsh lines from before. At least he did not lash out over my bold decisions. Silence reigned as the servers brought platters of food and began to serve the meal.
As Sully placed a plate before me, his nearness overwhelmed me with memories of everything said to one another, the near-kiss that I now desperately wished I had tasted. I tried to will away the warmth climbing into my face as Sully walked away, but it only seemed to increase. I glanced up to see Lady Remington’s intelligent gaze on me. “You look well. Quite happy too.” Her eyes searched my face as if to verify her words, and I offered a smile.
“I am well. Rothburne has been a wonderful change for me these last weeks.”
But I did wonder how the coming days would unfold. I glanced up at the man on the opposite end of the table whose features had a permanent weight to them, as if the air was heavier and thicker around him than it was for anyone else. We couldn’t linger in this dance forever, avoiding one another and that odious topic that hovered over us, yet I dreaded the moment of truth. I didn’t even know for sure what he knew, or what he’d done.
“So I see. Perhaps I was mistaken in worrying over you.” Lady Remington’s soft voice drew me back. “You must forgive my tongue. I seem to gather opinions with each passing year, and as I’m rather advanced in age, I have quite a lot of them. Unfortunately not all of them are worth listening to.” She threw a glittering, friendly smile toward me and lifted her knife and fork.
“Your concern has solidified our friendship, for which I’m grateful. I’ve not met many people here yet.”
“As well you shouldn’t,” she quipped as she finished her delicate bite. “Most of them are vultures when anyone from the peerage waltzes into their social circles. It’s so rare out here.”
I accepted a slice of bread. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
As Sully slipped into the room, my attention shifted. I couldn’t help but glance up at him as he bent toward Cousin Philip to offer stewed potatoes.
When our gazes met, a tiny smile flickered over his lips, and the sight of it washed my soul in gladness. I felt with powerful truth the words I’d skimmed over in the Hardy book while choosing my message to Sully a few days ago: “They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.” No matter my worries and doubts, his looks and tenderness, his very presence in this house, drove the truth of his affection directly into my heart when I set aside my apprehensions long enough to see it.
When I broke the gaze and turned back to my neglected guest, it seemed she too had been distracted. Lord Remington winked at his wife, and she fluttered her lashes in an amusing attempt to remain poised, but then she caught me looking at her. A coy smile turned her lips. “I suppose you’ve seen a great deal of romance in your travels. None so silly as an old married couple.”
“Far from silly.”
Sully approached then, and the power of his nearness, this man I’d adored since childhood, cut off anything else I’d meant to say. He leaned toward me, stopping much too far away with the bowl of potatoes.
I nodded my assent and forced my attention once more toward my guest as he began serving them. “What I mean to say is, it’s actually quite lovely to witness.”
She laughed. “Ah, how you flatter me.”
“Not at all. Those dramatic serial novel romances are exciting, but one never knows how they’ll fare on the rocks of everyday life. There’s something rare and intensely beautiful in a person who knows you well and loves you anyway. Ordinary men and everyday romances are the sweetest and deepest.” I took a breath, stealing a glance at Sully, who still hovered, spooning potatoes onto my plate. “There’s a wonderful charm to ordinary, everyday moments, and the people who remain through them.”
The spoon paused as his own words settled over him, revealing just how asleep I’d been when he’d spoken to me in the study.
“Ah, finally. A lady who understands a true hero.” Lord Remington looked my way with an appreciative sparkle to his countenance. “You must have experienced such a love yourself, to have those sentiments.”
Oh yes, I had. Lord Remington winked at the earl, while I forced myself not to look at Sully. I thought of that study full of books, each spine representing a world that had been opened to me by the man standing near. “I’ve learned that a true hero is not an extraordinary man. He may not impress the world, but he so greatly changes hers. That makes him utterly heroic indeed.”
For a moment my heart-drenched words hung in the air. Lady Remington sat up in her chair with a smile. “What intelligence you have for such a young woman. Your governess must have been the finest sort.”
I did not answer but turned back to my plate of food, which I found to be heaped with a tumbling mountain of potatoes. I smiled as Sully left, hoping no one would guess our secret.
As I pondered the guarded expressions of each diner, I wondered what other secrets lay beneath the surface. I had the feeling there was an abundance of them, and they would change the entire household if the fog of pretense were to lift and reveal them.
“Did you have a great many governesses or just one very smart one?”
I turned back to Lady Remington, summoning a proper reply with a smile. “Everything I learned about men and marriage I learned from observing the missteps and mistakes of real people. Especially myself.”
Her smile glittered. “My, but I’m glad I’ve discovered you, Lady Enderly. There’s something about you and your enchanting house that draws me in and awakens my mind. You have more poise than you’d believe, for you are a woman who knows exactly who you are, and you live that well.”
I stared at the damask tablecloth, uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation.
“I cannot wait to show you off to all of Somerset society. Which reminds me, perhaps we should discuss the upcoming soiree after dinner. There are so many pl—”
“No.” The earl’s voice sliced through hers. “I wish to speak to her alone. In my suite.”
I tensed and looked to Prendergast, who cast his anxious gaze toward me, his shoulders stiff under his jacket. He should say something, prevent me from being alone with this man, be the buffer he’d promised to be, but how could he? How could he demand, before all these guests, that a man—his employer, no less—not be alone with his wife? I swallowed and clutched the arms of my chair. In the corner, Sully’s eyes blazed like hot coals on the white ash of his face. Oh how dearly I needed him to rescue me—and not to.
I inhaled and felt dizzy, the fresh air seeming too heady for my senses.
21
Even without meeting a person, we can determine a lot about her by looking at the people she allows into her life.
~Diary of a Substitute Countess
I perched in the wingback chair in his overwarm sitting room, the great shadows of the fire leaping garishly. Shut into this private chamber with nothing but the fire to light the space, fear made my skin clammy and my fingers restless in my lap.
“You look so muc
h like her.” Haunted by some terrible beast of the past, the man hunched against the fireplace, his dark hair flopping in contrast over his pale forehead. His voice was gravelly. “How is it possible that you look so much like her? Are you a relation?”
“Not that I know of. I’ve never even met her.”
“When I saw you on the stairs, I . . . I could barely breathe.” He broke into pacing before the fire like a lion, head down and hand shoved back into his mussed hair. He grumbled something I couldn’t decipher. I gripped the upholstered arms of the chair and waited, unable to even cast up a silent prayer. I felt the weight of this mess, as well as my own responsibility involved, and could not bear to invite God into it.
He stopped and stared at me, his look piercing. “You must know how this torments me. Is that what Prendergast secretly aims to do—punish me?”
I pressed my lips together to consider my reply as my pulse ticked with painful intensity in the quiet room. I didn’t wish to know more, but I needed to. “Do you believe you should be?”
“Of course I do. I had my part in it.” He exhaled, pacing again. “That scoundrel told you it was my idea, though, didn’t he? Well, it wasn’t. Not that you’d believe me over the man who could charm dirt.”
I studied this broken shell of a man so different than the veneered evil of Prendergast, and my fear and dislike melted into pity tinged with compassion. “In fact, I do believe you.” There was something authentic in his brokenness, something worth restoring. I found myself wanting to help, but the idea overwhelmed me too. There was nothing simple about this man or the chaos raging within him.
He paused before the fire, his face haggard and drawn, his dark hair an erratic mess where his fingers had mussed it over and over. Firelight highlighted the gaunt hollows of his face. He crossed to me in two long strides and lowered himself into the matching armchair beside mine. “Of course you do. You’re just like her. She always believed in me too.”
Those simple words tightened the embrace of fear on my insides. He spoke of her in the past tense, as if her belief in him had died—or she herself had. I gulped, sick with anticipation as I stood on the edge of learning what I had wanted to know but wishing I didn’t have to hear it. “Perhaps you should tell me your side of the story, then.”
He turned large, haunted eyes on me for endless moments, and I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t voiced my suggestion out loud. Finally, he answered. “This has gone so much further than I ever meant it to. The money appealed to me initially, but not like it did to Prendergast. Never that much.”
He turned away. “It was he who set the fool thing in motion, then he approached me with what he’d done afterward. He made it sound easy. Seamless. No one would ever know—but how could they not? How could they not?” He bowed his head into his hands and his broad shoulders trembled in the jumping shadows. “And now everything is a disaster, and I haven’t any idea what to do.”
I cringed as he admitted feelings that so mirrored my own recently. “Could you do some good to those you’ve wronged?”
He gave a flat laugh. “I’ve wronged a lot of people.”
“Then I suggest you begin repaying.” I thought of the freedom from my own guilt I’d tasted as I helped the tenants, like Queen Esther saving her people. “If anything’s ill-gained, it should be given away.”
He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and pondered my suggestion. “But then I would have nothing.”
I studied the little bags under his eyes, the fear stretching his features, and didn’t know whether to pity his own self-entrapment or despise him for what he’d taken from others. “Then think of one person. One who is very deserving of your help and start there.”
More silence. When he finally lifted his dark, hollow gaze to mine, the wild intensity in his expression frightened me. It seemed unstable, unpredictable. “It’s you.”
“Me?” I was breathless.
“The only one who deserves anything in this is you. I wronged you first, and that’s what started this mess. I know it now, and I even knew it then, but I was too arrogant to admit it. You were always right, and I hated that.” He took my hand in his giant one, and my Spitalfields instincts took over, forcing me to remain still, to let it play out. Don’t run and no one will chase you. Yet my insides trembled as this powerful man looked past me and spoke in a distant, troubled voice, smoothing his thumb over my hand. “Surely you know I would do anything for you, Lyn. Anything.”
I shuddered at his use of her given name toward me in such an intimate tone. The heat of the fire became suffocating. I shifted. “Lord Enderly.”
He blinked and dropped my hand. “Her. I mean her.” He jerked away with a growl, and I flinched. “I cannot stand to look at you any longer. It’s as if I’m speaking to her and I cannot bear it. Mostly because I know you are not her. Could not be her.”
A quiet ache rolled around inside me as my hands lay helplessly in my lap. The question screamed through my mind—Where is she? I dared not voice it, though. Oh, how badly I wanted to. Yet another part of me realized I might not want to know the answer.
A knock sounded on his door, causing us both to jump. The butler’s voice came through, muffled by the wooden barrier. “My lord, you are wanted downstairs by Philip Scatchard.”
The next morning my chambermaid was quiet as she helped me dress. She eyed the pages of stationery still sprawled over my desk as she left, and I shuffled them together and hurried with them to the abandoned rooms, where I could write freely.
In the old library, I sat in the deep windowsill, staring at the name embossed across the top. I had wanted people to think I was the countess, but when that brute had looked at me and seen her . . . I shivered. In one smooth swoop I drew a line through her elegant name and penned mine just below. How much sweeter was that name upon the lips of the man I loved than her name upon the lips of her husband.
With my nerves knotted and my head throbbing, I knew it was time to leave. I could not share a house—a false marriage—with this earl who was more wolf than man, who was unstable and unpredictable. “Victor,” I said to my reflection in the glass. “Victor, it has to end. I’m no liar and you have made me into one. It’s too much for me and I will not continue it. No, I absolutely will not. I don’t care what you say . . .”
The words came easily when I told them to myself, when his gaze was not scorching clear down to my thoughts.
Setting aside the notepaper, I stared up at Lady Enderly. Her vitality emanated even through this painting, as if inviting everyone around her to share in her enthusiasm for every little thing.
A knock startled me, but it was only the downstairs maid summoning me to meet a visitor in the study. “Very well, I’ll be along.” Stashing the pages in a derelict shelf when she’d ducked out, I made my way toward the east end of the house. An eerie silence pervaded the main floor, and I wondered at the quiet.
Pausing before the windows to look for a carriage, a terse whisper nearby startled me. Senses alert, I glanced around. I paced toward where I’d heard the sound and saw the doors to the monks’ dormitory wing open. With a frown, I strode closer to investigate. When I neared, I saw the source of the whisper—Prendergast waved to me from the shadows.
I slipped into the hall, and he grabbed my arm, pulling me into an empty room and shutting the door. Before he spoke a word, I could feel the tension exuding from him. “It’s time to pull out every trick we have. You must behave perfectly, speak impeccably. Do you understand? I thought we had a little more time, but it seems dear old Uncle Wells is impatient.”
“He’s here?” Perhaps this charade would soon come to an end on its own.
“His solicitor. He sent his man down to handle some paperwork for the estate. Have you been practicing that signature I gave you?” I nodded, and he thrust a paper and pencil at me. “Show me.”
Steadying my hand, I drew out the signature I’d placed at the end of every diary entry written upon the countess’s stationery.
“Good, good. It’ll do. All you need to do is sign where he tells you and say little. Silence is even better. It’ll be an easy task as long as you stay focused and remember who you are. Can you do that?”
I shuddered to remember the earl calling me “Lyn” the night before in that deep, impassioned voice of a soul slightly unbalanced. That moment had brought the reality of this mess crashing down around me. I couldn’t bring myself to agree anymore—I merely lifted helpless eyes to Prendergast, pleading for release.
Anger lit his face in a flash. “You will do this.”
“It’s the earl. I’m afraid of him. I don’t want—”
He grabbed my arms and shoved me back against the door. “I don’t care what you want. You must do this. You are Lady Enderly and you’ll do exactly as I say. Is that clear?”
I stuck out my chin, bracing to keep it from trembling. “What if I don’t?”
His long fingers sank harder into my upper arms until I felt my pulse against them. He drew closer and his mint-tea breath fanned over my face. “I’ve killed before without a second thought. I choose people who are like wildflowers, plentiful and untended. Your type grows without being planted and dies without being missed.”
“Kill me and you’ll have no one to play countess.”
His eyes narrowed. “I never said it was you I’d kill.”
I turned away. Sully.
“I have a great many powerful connections, and he has nothing but a charge of mutiny hanging over his poor, doomed head. I do hope these facts have sufficed to change your mind.”
“He didn’t kill anyone on that ship.”
“That matters little to a judge. All that matters is what I will say about him, and I haven’t yet decided that.” His features hardened. “You will play this part for the solicitor. You will be the countess in every single way.”
Finding Lady Enderly Page 18