by Darcy, Norma
“Oh, this gets better and better! So there is more than one beauty at Thorncote? I thought you were keeping your cards close to your chest. Don’t trust me with her, do you?”
“My dear Hal, precisely what are you talking about?” asked the earl, looking pained.
“The chit Sarah tells me you are hanging after. The one you spirited out of the house before I even managed to get a look,” complained his brother. “Not fair, big brother, not fair at all. To keep all the best sport for yourself when you must know that Holme is as dull as dull can be.”
Lord Marcham shrugged. “The doors are unlocked. No-one is forcing you to stay if you find it tedious.”
“Now, Robbie, don’t get in a miff. I like Holme well enough, but you must allow that compared to London, the country is a little slow.”
“My dear Hal, there are three young and extremely pretty Blakelow sisters and one spinster aunt for you to try your charms on. Not even you can find fault with that.”
“And Georgiana?” asked his brother, a smile on his lips.
The earl looked away to the hills behind the house on the other side of the valley where a lone figure, no more than a pale blur at this distance, was slowly moving towards a farm gate. “By all means,” he replied. “I wish you luck with your endeavour. You’ll need it.”
“Speaking from experience, Rob?”
His lordship made no reply but patted the neck of his horse.
“Oh-ho!” cried Hal, grinning. “Here’s a to-do! Lovers’ tiff, eh?”
Lord Marcham threw him a scornful look. “To have a lovers’ tiff, as you term it, one would actually have to be in love. And I don’t think Georgiana Blakelow is capable of any such emotion.”
His brother’s grin broadened. “She has upset you, hasn’t she? Is that why you have been in the foulest temper all week?”
The grey eyes swung around sharply in his direction. “Can we go?”
“Go home? Not a bit of it,” replied Hal cheerfully. “I want to see the delightful Marianne. She is quite something out of the common way, or so I’m told.”
“She is,” his lordship agreed. “If you like meek and mild.”
“And you don’t like her?”
“Me? God no. Not in the way you mean, at any rate.”
“Sarah thinks that you secretly wish to make a match of it,” mused Hal airily.
“Did she indeed? Then Sarah is sadly mistaken.”
“Come on then,” cried Hal, urging his horse into a canter. “You may introduce me!”
* * *
Hal Hockingham could hardly believe his eyes.
This was Georgiana Blakelow? This oddity was his brother’s beauty? This queer looking woman who was wearing an extremely large, ugly and outmoded cap upon her head was the woman with whom he was infatuated? He must be queer in his attic!
Why, when his lordship could have the company of the most stunning women society had to offer, had he fallen for this nervous creature who stared at the floor through thick glass spectacles and covered any curves she may have had under a greatly oversized mourning gown? Apart from the fact that she was clumsy and spilled half the contents of the teapot across the tray, she also spoke no more than a handful words from the moment they arrived until the moment they took their leave.
That she and Marcham had fallen out was obvious; they barely spoke two words to each other for the entire duration of the visit. Hal watched his brother and noted with amusement how often his eyes strayed across the room, not seeking the angelic countenance of Marianne Blakelow, but seeking instead the stony features of the eldest sister.
And the strangest thing of all was that the woman seemed to show no interest in the earl. In fact she seemed far more interested in watching him. Hal would look up and find her staring at him, hastily turning away when she was caught in the act. What the devil was the woman staring at? Did he have a pimple on the end of his nose or something?
He ignored her. He devoted his attention to Marianne, trying to stave off the nagging sense that he knew the older sister from somewhere and instead focused his eyes on the perfect youthful bloom on Marianne’s downy cheeks. She really was the most delectable little piece. Too bad if his brother had cast his net into other waters. This girl was all eager attention and blushes, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t have a little dalliance while he was in the neighbourhood.
* * *
Miss Blakelow was never more relieved than when the two gentlemen stood up to leave.
To endure the icy, resentful stare of Lord Marcham was bad enough, but to sit opposite Hal Hockingham for the first time in ten years, to be forced to watch him flirting with Marianne was more than her nerves could bear.
She exchanged a long meaningful look with John as he showed the visitors to the door and she soon pleaded a headache and went to her room.
Hal Hockingham was here. She paced the floor, her fingers trembling.
Hal Hockingham. She put a shaking hand to her head and swore in a most unladylike manner.
What did this mean? Had he recognised her? How long would it be before others found her too? How long before her past threatened to rip her from her newfound family? Marianne, Kitty, Lizzy, Ned and Jack. Most of all little Jack.
Mr. Hockingham had sat opposite her, a cup of tea in his hands, looking every bit as handsome as she had remembered. He had paid her no attention, of course, why should he? He did not recognise her. She had gone to great lengths to ensure that no-one should know her. But the way he looked at her, as if trying to place her, was disquieting to be sure.
She had peered at him over the rim of her cup, taking in his figure, his face, his smile. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes were drawn to his face as if he were magnetic. He seemed to sense her stare and looked in her direction and then uncomfortably looked away. He smiled uncertainly, as if feeling out whether she was friend or foe but she could not return the gesture. Her mind drifted back to the last time she had seen him, to that sordid inn, miles from anywhere. His arms, warm and safe…comforting. He looked thinner, older, slightly world weary but he was still her Hal.
And then she had sensed other eyes upon her and knew that his lordship was watching her. She could feel his scrutiny, the critical, resentful stare burning into her face. His expression when they shook hands at their parting was not one she would easily forget.
She stalked to the armoire in the corner of the room and pulled down the bag that was always kept packed and ready for an emergency flight.
Had he guessed? How much did Marcham know? And did he blame her for it as every man she had ever come to care for had?
“I thought that’s what you’d be thinking,” said a soft voice behind her.
Miss Blakelow whirled around as the door closed. “Oh, John, what choice do I have?”
“He didn’t recognise you.”
“He was looking at me,” she cried flinging the bag onto the bed. “I could tell he sensed something.”
“He did not recognise you, Miss,” he said again, coming towards her.
“I have to go. Now. This minute,” she said, unfastening the bag and opening it.
“We can’t, Miss. We’re not ready.”
She picked up her book and flung it into the bag. “Then I’ll go on ahead. I’ll send word where I am.”
“And bring him direct to your door in the process,” said John with gentle admonishment. “I won’t let you do it. I swore to your Papa that I would look after you and I’m not letting you wander alone without even me for company.”
“But John, don’t you see? If Hal has found me, it’s only a matter of time before he finds me too. And I can’t go back to him…I won’t.”
John put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You have become as dear to me as a daughter. Do you honestly think I would let anything happen to you?”
She looked into his well-worn and rugged face. “I’m tired of running, John.”
“I know you are, Miss.”
“And I’m frighte
ned.”
He clumsily patted her shoulder. “There now, don’t you cry. Old John Maynard still has a trick or two up his sleeve.”
“No,” she said, wiping angrily at her tears. “I mean…I’m truly grateful to you…for everything…but no more. Not this time. You’ve followed me from pillar to post since my mother died. You gave up your own chance of a family and happiness to look after me.”
He blushed. “Nah, Miss. It’s not so bad. And I’d do it again if the decision was mine to take.”
“Dear John, you have been such a good friend to me. But enough. You love Thorncote. You have Janet now and I won’t let you give her up for me. The time has come for me to strike out on my own.”
“And what do you plan to do, Miss? Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Her faithful servant cleared his throat. “As the wife of the Earl of Marcham, you’d have his protection…”
Her eyes lit with fire. She remembered the way he had looked at her and she was determined that she would never ask him for anything ever again. “No!”
“No man would dare go up against his lordship―”
“I do not need his help.”
“Begging your pardon Miss, but I think you do.”
“I’d rather marry Mr. Peabody than marry a man who has less idea of marital fidelity than…than the Prince of Wales!” she flashed.
“I know you and he have fallen out…”
She glared at him. “Do you?” she asked dangerously.
“My Janet is friendly with the housekeeper up at the big house, Miss. The word was that you sent him to the roundabout and that he was not best pleased about it.”
Miss Blakelow’s bosom heaved. So now her private conversation with his lordship was all over Loughton? “Indeed?”
John swallowed. “Janet told me that he―um, well, perhaps I’d best not say.”
“She told you that he’d what, John?” she pursued with narrowed eyes.
He shuffled his feet. “I’m not sure as I should say, Miss.”
“John, you had better tell me.”
Her servant coloured and looked at the floor.
“John?”
He sighed deeply. “Janet told me that he fell asleep in the bed where you stayed when you were knocked off your horse, Miss.”
Miss Blakelow opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and closed it shut again.
“He’s taken your refusal awful bad, Miss.”
“Good,” she flashed, swiping a miniature portrait of her mother from her bedside table and throwing it in the bag.
“They say he’s hardly ate a thing all week.”
“I don’t care,” she declared.
John reached into the bag, took out the tiny painting and set it back upon the table again.
She glared at him. “What are you doing?”
“I could have a word with Janet who could drop a word to her friend up at the house that you were of a mind to have him.”
“And have all the servants knowing my business?”
“Begging your pardon, Miss, but they know it anyway.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I will not marry Robert Hockingham. Can I be any plainer?”
“You’ve no fancy to be a countess, Miss?”
She took the tiny painting and put it back in the bag again, daring her manservant to disobey her again. “None.”
“It would solve a good many problems.”
“And create a good many more,” she muttered, pulling a bundle of letters from a drawer and flinging them into the bag.
He bit his lip. “Lord Marcham is…is a man of the world. Chances are that he’ll understand your predicament better than most.”
She shook her head. “He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know it. Men—present company excepted—are hypocrites. He once told me that men of his sort did not fall in love with women like me.”
John, recognising the signs of a stubborn female digging in her heels, said no more. But once his mistress had calmed down enough to stop trembling, he managed to elicit from her a promise that she would not run away that night and went even so far as to encourage her to set the miniature of her mother back upon the table.
* * *
The next morning brought a brief letter addressed to Miss Blakelow from her brother William who was still in London. She opened it with some impatience and was little satisfied with its contents.
On the subject of her Aunt Susan’s demands that he cease his dalliance with her daughter Charlotte, he merely wrote that she had a mouth that put him in mind of a horse he once had sight of at Tattersall’s. He was hoping to come to Thorncote for the earl’s ball, but could not be certain as he had invited to stay with a friend, Mr. Boyd, who was a capital fellow.
Miss Blakelow screwed up his note and hurled it into the fire. Foolish, silly boy! Did he not know what he endangered by playing with the affections of Charlotte Thorpe? Did he not know how close to ruin they all were?
She hastily seized a pen and paper and wrote to him again, demanding that he come home immediately. So distracted by her thoughts was Miss Blakelow that she had forgotten to pick up her glasses and cap before she left the room and thus, when Hal Hockingham entered the drawing room in the middle of the afternoon in pursuit of Marianne, he was rather shocked to find a familiar face looking back at him.
So entirely was Miss Blakelow thrown by the encounter that she knocked her sewing basket over and silks of every colour tumbled onto the floor. It gave her an excuse to avert her gaze and for several minutes she was employed in retrieving her belongings and keeping up a stream of utterly pointless conversation about the weather.
Oh, where was her aunt? Where was Marianne? She was desperate for rescue for this man was staring at her as if she were a ghost. She swallowed, blushed and stuttered something about needing to go upstairs.
“Sophie?” he whispered.
“Who?” she asked, with a valiant attempt to continue with her ruse.
He stared at her and his mind tried to make sense of what he saw before him. “Who the devil…? Who are you?”
“We met the other day, I believe,” she said brightly, coming forward to shake his hand in an attempt to bluff her way through the situation. “I am Georgiana Blakelow.”
He shook her hand mechanically, his boots gleaming in the sunlight as he walked towards her. His eyes were dark and held hers and she felt as if she could swim in their depths.
“Sophie? Is it you?” he asked softly, still holding her hand in his.
She pulled hers away. “I think you are mistaken, sir. I know of no-one by that name―”
He turned towards the fireplace, took a stride towards it and then spun around to face her once again. “I―I don’t believe it. I thought you were dead.”
She swallowed hard. “I say again, my name is Georgiana―”
He narrowed his eyes in triumph. “I thought I recognised you the other day! I was racking my brains all the way home but I couldn’t quite place you…”
Miss Blakelow felt a rising sense of panic as the situation seemed to be slipping beyond her control. “If you will excuse me, sir, I have an appointment. If you are looking for Marianne, she has walked into Loughton. She will be back within the hour, I dare say. Good day to you.”
He laid a hand on her arm to detain her. “No don’t run away…Sophie. It is you, isn’t it?”
Miss Blakelow’s eyes slid from his. What was the point of continuing to deny it? He had recognised her.
He laughed and shook his head. “Oh, this is famous! To think of how we all looked for you and you vanished into thin air! And this is where you have been hiding all this time?”
She did not answer him.
“Oh, what a good joke it is! Two miles from Marcham’s door! Just wait until I tell Caroline! How she will roar with laughter!”
Her eyes shot to his face and she grasped his a
rm imploringly. “Oh, no, you must not. Please promise me that you won’t tell anyone who I am.”
He looked slightly taken aback. “Not tell anyone? Not tell Caro, your dearest friend?”
Miss Blakelow shook her head. “I cannot risk it. If he should find me…”
“He?” Mr. Hockingham grew quiet. “Is he still after you, then?”
She gave a laugh that was utterly bereft of humour. “Oh, yes. He’ll never give up.”
“I did not know that it was you the other day…” he said, “I mean…when I knocked you from your horse.”
“I took care that you should not know me. I took great care that no-one should know me.”
He nodded, slowly. “Georgiana Blakelow. The perfect ruse.”
She shrugged. “She has served me well enough.”
“Does my brother know about us?”
She shook her head and dropped her eyes to the floor. “No. And it must stay that way. No-one can know who I am, Hal. No-one. You must promise me.”
“But why?”
She looked up at him. “Because I am still in hiding. Because I cannot allow my reputation to catch up with me. Because I would not inflict my past upon my brothers and sisters, that’s why.”
“Who knows what happened but you and I?” he asked softly.
His voice was deep and intoxicating and listening to him she was transported back ten years when he had persuaded her to run away with him. He was handsome. His voice was like silk. She had known men like him before and they were dangerous.
“Do you forget that I was ruined in the eyes of the world?” she asked in a low, calm voice.
“The world is a great deal too ready to listen to gossip.”
“I think that we gave the world enough to gossip about, Mr. Hockingam,” she said acidly. “We were away for three days.”
“And who knew?” he asked again. “Your Aunt Thorpe. Julius. You and I.”
“Yes,” she agreed scathingly, “and your mother and your sister and all the servants. Not to mention your wife who you conveniently forgot to mention, then as now.”
He coloured faintly beneath his tan. “It was not intended to be that way.”