When Falcons Fall

by C. S. Harris

  Some fifteen or sixteen years at the time she was painted, she was laughing down at a small kitten that clambered over her lap. Her smile was both vibrant and warm, and yet there was something about her posture that made her seem vaguely detached from both the artist painting her and the other members of her family. Her natural, unpowdered hair was the same rich, reddish blond as her brother’s, although she lacked his sharp nose and rather weak chin. In fact, she looked very much like a younger version of the woman sitting behind her.

  The resemblance of both mother and daughter to the pallid young woman Sebastian had last seen being prepared for burial was unmistakable.

  Sebastian felt a heavy weight of sadness as the implications of what he was seeing sank into him. He had assumed Emma Chandler must be the natural daughter of the Second Earl of Heyworth, carelessly begotten on some mistress or village girl. But he realized now that the actual truth was probably far more tragic, that Emma was in all likelihood the child of this laughing young girl whose exact name—and fate—were unknown to him.

  He swung around to stare back at the stony-faced Dowager who still sat with her hands clenching the gilded arms of her chair. He’d thought her anger and cold indifference to Emma’s fate the product of a proud woman’s resentment of her husband’s bastard. But if his suppositions were correct, then Emma Chandler was this woman’s granddaughter.

  He might have apologized for so callously breaking the news to her of her granddaughter’s death. Except that he had no doubt she’d already known.

  And didn’t care.

  Sebastian was waiting for Tom to bring the curricle round when Lord Heyworth’s butler came to stand beside him.

  An aged, dignified man with thick white hair, a deeply lined, impassive face, and a fiercely upright carriage, the butler gazed out at the carriage sweep before the house and said, “You’ll be wishing to stop somewhere for the night, my lord?”

  Sebastian studied the man’s stoic, unreadable profile. “Can you recommend something?”

  The butler kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. “The Black Lion in Kirby is quite comfortable, my lord. The innkeeper’s wife once served as governess to Lord Heyworth and his sister, Lady Emily. A Miss Rice, she was then. Did you know Lady Emily, my lord? She died twenty-one years ago now, at the tender age of seventeen. Tragic, it was.”

  Sebastian watched Tom bring the chestnuts to a stand before them with a cocky flourish. “Yes, it must have been. Thank you for the recommendation. My horses have already gone far enough for one day.”

  The butler gave a stately bow and withdrew.

  Chapter 35

  The Black Lion proved to be a neat, eighteenth-century brick inn with white casement windows and a steep slate roof. It stood in the center of the village of Kirby, a small cluster of houses centered around a soaring fifteenth-century jewel of a church.

  The innkeeper was a large, jolly-looking man named Will Hanson. In his late fifties with an ample girth, three chins, and ruddy cheeks, he bustled forward to greet Sebastian with a wide smile, his voice booming, “Welcome! Welcome!” But when he heard Sebastian’s name, the smile faded into something pained. “Ah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You’re here about the poor lass was killed up Ayleswick way.”

  Sebastian paused in the act of swinging off his driving coat in the inn’s flagged hall and looked over at his host in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Stayed with us some three or four weeks back, she did.” The innkeeper motioned over a lanky, half-grown lad. “Here, Richard, take his lordship’s portmanteau up to the best bedchamber while I have Bridget fetch some hot water.” To Sebastian, he said, “And then I reckon your lordship will be wishing to speak with my wife?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I arrived at Pleasant Park when Lady Emily was eight and her brother, Albert, had just been breeched,” said Sarah Hanson. She was a plump woman a few years younger than her husband, with silvery gray hair framing a plain, kind face. “I was very young at the time myself. My father was a vicar in Worcestershire, but he died when I was nineteen, and I had no brothers. Fortunately, my father had seen that I was given a good education, and his successor was kind enough to assist me in locating a position.”

  They were walking along a narrow, shady lane that wound around the village’s ancient churchyard, toward the fields beyond. The evening was as overcast and somber as the day, the air cool and damp and filled with birdsong from the rooks, jackdaws, and thrushes coming in to roost in the soaring tops of the chestnuts and beech overhead.

  “I used to wonder what would have happened to Emily if I hadn’t come along,” said the former governess. “She was so very different from the other members of her family. She told me once that she felt like a changeling—although of course she was not. From what I’ve heard, I suspect she took after her grandfather, the First Earl, who was by all accounts a remarkable man. But he was dead by the time Lady Emily came along. She was a very unhappy child.”

  “How long were you with the family?” Sebastian asked.

  “Nearly ten years.”

  “So until Lady Emily died?”

  Sarah Hanson’s face pinched with an old but still raw grief. “She died in my arms.”

  “In childbirth?”

  “No. They killed her—her family, I mean. Oh, they could never be charged, of course. But they killed her, just as surely as if they’d run her through with a sword.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She looked up at him, her gaze steady and solemn. “I can tell you what I know.”

  It began innocently enough, late in the summer of 1791, when Lady Emily was just sixteen, young and beautiful and filled with a joyful zest for life.

  A message arrived one afternoon at Pleasant Park from the Irvings of Maplethorpe Hall, inviting Lady Heyworth and her daughter to a country house party to be held the first week of September. Predictably, Lady Heyworth turned up her nose at the invite, saying with a sniff, “How impudent of them. Do they seriously think I would even consider accepting? The family positively reeks of the shop. Why, when I encountered Mrs. Irving at the assembly in Ludlow last spring, she told me her great-grandfather was a butcher!” Her ladyship gave a scornful titter. “Can you imagine?”

  But Lady Emily was eager to attend her first real, grown-up house party. And so she assembled a carefully rehearsed list of arguments and approached her mother in her sitting room several mornings later.

  “About the house party at Maplethorpe Hall . . . ,” she began.

  Lady Heyworth was busy embroidering a fire screen and barely glanced at her daughter. “What about it?”

  “I agree that Mrs. Irving isn’t quite the thing,” said Emily, clenching her hands behind her back. “But I do like her daughter, Liv. And you said yourself that I need more practice going into company before my Come Out in London next spring.”

  Lady Heyworth kept her attention focused on her needlework. “Your Come Out is precisely why you must take care to avoid such entertainments. It would do you no credit for it to become known that you had lent your presence to a gathering of vulgar, pushing mushrooms.”

  “But that’s just it, you see; the guest list is quite select—Liv wrote me all about it. Lady Dalton is taking Julia, and . . .” Here Emily paused to draw a deep breath in preparation for what she hoped would be her most persuasive argument. “Lord Stone will be there.”

  Lady Heyworth’s hands stilled at their task as she looked over at her daughter. “Stone? You’re quite certain?”

  Edward, Lord Stone, might be only a baron, but his estates were worth forty thousand pounds a year. Set against so grand a fortune, the fact that he was thirty-five years old, stout, and addicted to opera dancers and highflyers was inconsequential; Lady Heyworth had decided he would make a marvelous catch for her daughter and was already scheming of ways to bring Emily to his lordship�
��s notice. Emily had no intention of satisfying her mother’s ambitions in that direction, but she wasn’t above using the lure of Lord Stone’s presence to achieve her own ends.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so before, you silly chit?” exclaimed her ladyship. “Of course you must go.” She pulled a face. “Although I won’t deny that the thought of having to endure that Irving woman for a good week is enough to bring on my spasms.” Then a happy thought occurred to her. “You say Lady Dalton will be there with Julia? I wonder if I could prevail upon her to take you into her charge.”

  A letter of inquiry was duly dispatched to Lady Dalton, and a favorable response received. The fact that Lady Heyworth would be sending her sixteen-year-old daughter off to a country house party under the lax chaperonage of a woman known to be as lazy as she was fond of card games and discreet love affairs was not seen as an impediment.

  “I had serious forebodings,” the former governess told Sebastian now as they paused beside an ancient, moss-covered stone wall to gaze out over the churchyard. “But between Lady Emily’s determination and her mother’s ambitions, no one would listen to me.”

  “She went?”

  “She did, yes. She had a marvelous time at first. How could she not? She was away from her mama’s censorious eye, and she was so pretty, and she was in the company of a good dozen men with whom to strike up a flirtation.”

  “Who was there besides Stone?”

  “Let’s see. . . . Lady Dalton brought her twenty-two-year-old son, George, as well as Julia. And Stone had several boon companions in his train—men of a similar ilk, I’m afraid. There were others as well, although I can’t recall them now. She wrote me a letter while she was there, talking about some of the people she’d met. I saved it. In fact, I showed it to Emma Chandler.”

  “May I see it?”

  Sarah Hanson pushed away from the churchyard wall and turned back toward the inn. “If you think it would be helpful, yes.”

  Chapter 36

  The letter was yellowed with age and worn, as if its recipient had pored over it again and again in search of an elusive clue that might bring understanding—or at least some sort of comfort.

  Sarah Hanson slipped the folded pages from between the leaves of a Bible that rested on the table beside a comfortably worn chair in the Hansons’ private parlor. She fingered it a moment, as if reluctant to have Sebastian read it, lest he harshly judge one who’d been so dear to her. “Remember: She was very young when she wrote it,” she said, finally holding it out to him. “Just sixteen.”

  Lady Emily’s handwriting had been graceful and delicate, her enthusiasm for her first grown-up house party readily obvious in the letter’s numerous underlinings and exclamation points.

  My dear, dear Miss Rice,

  Oh, I am so glad Mama was convinced by the lure of Lord Stone’s presence to allow me to come to Maplethorpe, for I am having the most marvelous time!

  Thankfully, Lord Stone has shown not the slightest interest in me. I hear he prefers his women “mature and experienced”—no innocents need apply!—which suits me just fine. (Do you think if I tell Mama, she will abandon her matchmaking schemes? Or will she simply blame me for not putting myself forward enough?) His lordship and his companions are out most of the day shooting, and when they do return to the house, their attention is consumed by the billiards table, the contents of Mr. Irving’s extensive cellars, and some foul-smelling things I’m told are called cheroots. Fortunately, the same cannot be said of most of the other gentlemen present, so it is only during the day that we ladies are forced to amuse ourselves with our needlework and reading and letter writing, or rambling walks through the countryside and to the village.

  I already wrote Mother and Father about my fellow houseguests, so shall I tell you instead of the village? There are several of what Mama calls the “better sort” of families in the neighborhood. The gentlemen have been invited to join the houseguests in their shooting and they also come in the evening with their wives to dinner. From the Grange comes Squire Rawlins and his quiet little mouse of a wife. The Squire is like a character out of Chaucer—large, gruff, loud, opinionated, and so addicted to snuff he is always liberally dusted with the stuff. He is even older than Lord Stone and interested in nothing beyond his horses and his hounds and his port—oh, and his land and herds, of course. He told me to my face he has no patience for struggling to make conversation with some chit barely out of the schoolroom! How I feel for his wife, for she is not much older than I.

  Far more congenial is Lord Seaton of Northcott Abbey, a fine estate that lies to the west of Ayleswick. His lordship also has a wife, although they say she is increasing and ill as a result, so she seldom goes into company these days. Liv tells me there are whispers about his lordship, if you know what I mean. And I must say his behavior does seem to bear them out, for he has been quite marked in his attentions to me, and he is so handsome and charming that my head would surely be turned were it not for Liv’s warnings.

  There is also a Major Weston, who is a frequent guest at Maplethorpe. He is quite gallant and likeable, although Lady Dalton bestirred herself from her flirtation with one of Lord Stone’s cronies long enough to warn me he is utterly without fortune and must make his own way in the world. He is related to Lord Weston of Somersfield Park, but while that must obviously make him attractive to Mrs. Irving (Liv tells me her mama is most anxious for her to make some noble connection), I know my own mama would take to her bed for a week were she to learn that her daughter had so much as smiled at a mere major. And if she were to hear about the brooding and romantically dashing young man down at the Ship! Well, I do believe she would suffer an apoplexy. But not to worry, my dear Rice, for I am mindful always of what is owed my house, and am content merely to attempt to capture that young man’s likeness in my sketchbook. If only my humble talents were equal to the challenge!

  On Sunday, those of us who were astir trooped down to the village for church services. I wish you had been there so that I might have heard your opinion of the local vicar, one Reverend Benedict Underwood. He is only recently ordained—I believe the living was a gift from some uncle. His sermon on Galatians 5:19–21 was both thought provoking and scholarly (although I fear it sailed over the heads of the vast majority of his parishioners!). But I found his delivery most peculiar, for he reminded me of a thespian on a stage—quite self-consciously dramatic and so very proud. He is an attractive man for a vicar (if you like that look; I do not), although not, surely, quite as handsome as he believes himself to be. I told him in all sincerity how much I enjoyed his sermon and was tempted to add that I would love to hear him expound on 1 Samuel 16:17. But I was a good girl and held my tongue!

  It was while we were still on the porch that a strange lout of a boy from the village—Reuben Dickie is his name—tried to chase a billy goat right into the church! They claim he is harmless—“half-soaked and yampy,” as they say here in Shropshire. His brother soon put a stop to the lad’s antics, with the assistance of Samuel Atwater, Northcott’s strangely solemn steward. But as they led Reuben away, he threw me such a look over his shoulder that I’ve quite made up my mind to avoid the village from now on.

  But never fear, my dear Miss Rice, for I am having a marvelous time. I can’t wait until next February, when we go to London! And now I must dash off, for Mrs. Irving has got up an expedition to Northcott Gorge, which is said to be quite lovely and haunted by the ghosts of two star-crossed medieval lovers. I will write more later.

  Your devoted pupil,

  Emily

  Sebastian was silent for a moment, caught by the pathos of the long-dead girl’s joyous enthusiasms. He folded the letter and handed it back to the former governess.

  “She never wrote again?”

  Sarah Hanson tucked the letter back into the book. “No. She came home three days later. I knew the instant I saw her that something dreadful must have occurred, but she
refused to speak of it. I didn’t learn the truth for another two months.”

  “When she realized she was with child?”

  She nodded. “She was forced. Although I’m afraid Lady Turnstall refused to believe her. Insisted that if Emily hadn’t given herself willingly, then she must have done something to make the man think she would welcome his advances.”

  “She never named the father?”

  “No. All she would say was that he was one of the men she had written me about, and that marriage to him was impossible. Once—after the child was born—I heard her whisper to the baby that she had her father’s hair. But that was the only hint she ever gave.”

  “So the father was dark.”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian thought of the men named in the letter. He understood, now, the origins of the list they’d found in Emma Chandler’s room. Of all the men mentioned in her mother’s letter, only Lord Stone had been missing from Emma’s list. But then Stone—nearly sixty now and riddled with syphilis—was famous for his full head of bright ginger hair.

  “What happened when Lady Turnstall discovered her daughter was with child?” Sebastian asked.

  “She sent her away. I had a cousin living in reduced circumstances in a large house in Barmouth, overlooking the estuary, and she was happy enough to have us come stay with her. Lady Emily was introduced to the neighborhood as the tragic young widow of a major recently killed in the American colonies.”

  “A useful fiction,” said Sebastian. And borrowed by Lady Emily’s daughter herself decades later, although for a slightly different reason.

  “The child came dreadfully early,” said the former governess, going to stand at the window overlooking the village high street. “She was so small and weak, I thought sure she would die. But she didn’t. Most women in her situation would have hated the product of such a conception, but Emily was besotted with the infant from the moment she first held her. She was desperate to keep her.”