Chapter 10
Three days later, Lizzie paced the terrace on the north side of Felmont’s Folly after the morning calls were over. Humiliation still colored her cheeks. She walked in the shade of the great house and heard through the open doors to the reception room, the faint murmurs of sympathy and disbelief from servants clearing the cups and plates.
To think that she had recovered enough from a night of wifely duty to laugh at the memory of the viscount getting stuck on the word Spode. To give him credit for not embarrassing her, for not using her ill, for trying to talk of pottery and the Folly to distract her and put her at ease with him. She had recognized his kindness and patience with her. Her body hummed at the thought of him, and her smile of welcome might have been true.
And then the morning calls began. Until today they were quiet visits by curious neighbors, nothing to upset her, nothing to shock her.
Drat the man! He could not have found a way to more thoroughly humiliate her.
The fell loomed not half a mile away, its morning mist long burned away by the sun. She could see the old church’s Saxon tower peeping over the hawthorns.
The vicar would miss the payment he received for leading a Sunday service there. Most of the local people preferred the new church, closer to home, but Lizzie liked the old church with its view of the Folly. She’d visit for one last time before she left forever.
Three days ago, the Beast had gone to the Priory with Molly and Mr. Rackham. A letter, tucked into a bouquet of hedgerow flowers, came from the Priory the first day. The viscount would not be returning for the next few nights. He wished to give her time to recover. He wrote that he intended to stay at his home and Lizzie had only to send for him if she needed him. And then he had disappeared, to appear again at the Priory, but not alone.
The pitying stares began when her visitors talked of a tall, elegant French woman who had arrived at the Priory in a closed carriage attended by two maids and the viscount. Mr. Whittaker, the local magistrate, had given his opinion that the apple did not fall far from the tree.
How kind of them all to warn her.
James hovered anxiously by her side. “Don’t, I beg you, Lady Felmont. Don’t run from him.” Her dark traveling dress had given him pause. Her order to hitch her Cleveland Bays to the old berline had made him aghast.
He followed her to whisper his advice, “It’s the last thing you should consider doing, if you don’t mind me saying so, Lady Felmont.”
“I am not running, I am leaving. You know he has a woman at the Priory.” Lizzie twisted her fingers together. One night with her and the Beast had fled into the arms of a French whore. No doubt he was as eager for Lizzie to leave as she was to go. “All the world believes she is his mistress, why should I believe differently?”
“They’d both laugh at the idea, my lady.” James darted to move a stray chair from her path. Lizzie watched him peer quickly over the neglected gardens as if he feared to be overheard. There was no one there. The Beast was busy with his French woman. If he was anything like his father, he’d not be seen for weeks.
“Molly is like a sister to him,” said James. “She used to bully him something shocking when they were young.”
“Molly? I’m not speaking of Molly. The viscount has a French woman at the Priory.” Lizzie saw James start. He flushed and his curly brown hair seemed to stand on end.
“He’s what? I don’t believe it, my lady. He’s never! Has he? By Gawd! Could she be a maid? A French maid. He’d never have got our Molly a French maid? Sometimes, I think he’s off his head.”
James took a deep breath. “There’s something you should know. That day when you’d just arrived at the Folly, when his lordship threw you in the lake, he thought you were Molly. She’d been teasing him, pretending she was you, lisping his name. My sister had pushed him in earlier—you probably didn’t notice his clothes were wet. We all fled when you appeared, but Dace hadn’t noticed ... beg your pardon, the viscount hadn’t noticed we’d gone. He threw you in by mistake.”
“Why didn’t the viscount tell me?” Lizzie asked, but she knew why. He’d protected Molly from his father’s wrath.
“Because he didn’t want it known we were all there,” said James. “Everyone had gone to your mother’s wedding, so Dace had given us a tour of the grounds. He knew he was in for a beating for getting wet.”
“No doubt.” But Lizzie did doubt that the towering Beast could ever have been bullied by a female. “The French woman is not likely to be a maid for your sister. Everyone will think he has made one of them mistress of the Priory, and I am free to leave. Either way, I must leave.”
“I swear he has not set Molly up as mistress of the Priory, my lady.” James was hiding something, Lizzie knew it.
She stared at the perspiration forming on his brow. His cropped curly hair seemed to curl even more. “Then who is there? Who has need of a French maid? Who has he deemed worthy of his interest?” She turned towards the reception room doors.
James followed her. “My lady, go there and see for yourself. Don’t run, he’d chase you for sure and it would set him off. Devilish strange he can be when he gets in one of his moods. There is no knowing what he’d do.”
In the end, Lizzie agreed that James could drive her to the Priory to see who was there. She didn’t trust herself to take the reins in her present state of anxiety. She was halfway there before she realized, for the first time in her life, she had forgotten to be escorted by her outriders.
The day proved warm. Lizzie raised her parasol and kept to her side of the curricle seat. Arthur stood at the back and ran to open and close the farm gates on the way. The two miles passed far too quickly. She heard a whisper from Arthur, but could not understand a word of the garbled speech, though it sounded like a warning.
James silenced him with a shake of his head.
The Priory crouched by the river, a dark mass covered with ivy. Its gloomy stones, gray and fringed with moss when visible beneath the leaves, attested to its age and damp location. A slight rise in elevation had saved it from many a flooding and left it, at times, surrounded by water and cut off from the world. Unfortunately, it had not been wet enough for that to save her now.
She was about to beard the Beast in his lair. The sun disappeared behind a cloud as if afraid to witness what came next.
Arthur rushed to hold the horse’s head, while James assisted Lizzie to climb down. Her feet were barely on the ground when Arthur hurried away with her only means of escape, unless she walked back to the Folly through the home park. With as much dignity as she could muster she marched up the flagstones, resisting an urge to flee across the lawn that wound around the serpentine flower beds.
Lizzie’s nerves took a turn for the worse at the ancient, nail-studded door. The Beast had warned her not to come to the Priory without an invitation. To catch him in the act of sinning needed bravery and cunning—if only she had either under her command.
At least the Beast’s arrogant, debauched father had not installed his whores in his home. Not while his wife still lived.
James rang the bell and waited with his face as stiff as his back.
The door swung open.
Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1) Page 12