by Sandra Byrd
“Are you expected?” he asked me, eyeing the familiar horse.
“I know not,” I answered. “I shall find out, shan’t I?”
I straightened my dress but the velvet was damp. I tried to pull my hair into a neat arrangement after having ridden in the mist. I walked up the front steps, feeling a bit out of place, and before I could knock, the butler opened the door. His face screwed up as he looked, in vain, for a carriage or a chaperone. “Can I help you?” he finally asked.
“I’m here for Captain Whitfield,” I said. “Is he in at present?”
“I’m uncertain, miss. Please, come in.” He ushered me into the great hallway. “Who shall I say is calling?”
“Miss Rebecca Ravenshaw.”
He nodded. “Wait here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A few minutes passed before Luke entered the hallway from one of the long wings. “Rebecca.” He took my arm and led me into the library, to a set of large leather chairs placed before a huge fire in an ancient fireplace. “Your riding habit is damp,” he said. “Shall I ring to see if there is something you could change into? And where is Mrs. Ross?” He looked toward the hallway.
“I came alone,” I said quietly. “The fire will help dry this quickly.” Warmth was already seeping through me—starting with the arm he had so tightly held. He drew our chairs near one another so we could speak quietly, but of course, the library door had been left open.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I rode Notos.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “Since you’d asked for her to be left.”
“Asked?” I gently inclined my head. “I’ve been in London all day.”
Now he looked askance. “Mrs. Ross herself asked me to leave her for you earlier this afternoon.”
“But Mrs. Ross was with me,” I said. Then I softened. We could sort that out later. That was not why I had come and I did not want to be distracted. “One of the carriage horses was lame and . . . I wanted to reach you. Quickly.”
He took my hand in his own. “I was very concerned when Mrs. Blackwood told me that you had gone to London.”
“Daniel and Mrs. Ross went with me,” I reminded him. The skeptical look on his face shared that he did not believe that to be enough. Wait till he finds out I went to the docks and Whitechapel!
We sat there quietly for a moment. “I have a proposal for you,” I said.
He looked up, hope on his face. “I hope it mirrors the proposal I have in mind.”
I took a deep breath. “I wondered if, perhaps, you’d like to buy Headbourne House. I’d like it to go to someone who will cherish it and you would, certainly . . .” I stopped speaking as the color drained from his face and then he flushed again with what looked like confusion and sorrow. He ran his hand through his hair, looked at me with a crushed expression, stood up, and walked away from me. Then he looked out of the window for some time before coming back.
“Your proposal is that you should sell the house to me?” His voice conveyed disbelief and grief.
I stood to face him, my heart sinking, and then crying out for me to tell the man how I felt, honestly, to risk all, to explain why I must only offer my home and not my heart. But I could not. “You’d paid for the renovations, which I thank you so much for . . .” My voice faltered.
Fortune favors the bold, Rebecca.
I closed my eyes for just a moment before proceeding. I was Flora, the garden statue, pleading and still, but crumbling round the edges, in need of rescue. I needed to be immediately forthright with the main concern. Now. Now! Speak of it. “I saw you pull another woman into the chapel with you,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to interfere in your personal concerns. So . . .” It was all too much. I blinked back tears. “I just thought, well, I just thought that we were, you and I, that we’d . . . I misunderstood. Then once I knew my financial position I realized I could not keep Headbourne. Who better for it to go to than you? And then, someday, to your children.”
By another woman. I choked on the thought.
He ran his hand through his black hair again, silver streak falling stubbornly out of place, then pulled the second chair closer and leaned in toward me.
“That woman at the chapel was Michelene.”
“Michelene!” Not that it made it better; in fact, it was, perhaps, much worse. Betrayed on two sides.
He put his finger to his lips and then to mine. “Let’s not involve the household, shall we?”
I nodded my agreement. “I’m sorry.”
“That night, I heard a noise at the window of the guesthouse. I looked out and thought I saw a woman. When I looked again a few minutes later, I saw that it was a woman. I believed, or perhaps hoped, it was you, grew concerned, and wanted to make sure you weren’t in need of help. I thought there was something, perhaps, you wanted to share with me away from prying eyes and ears. Where better than the chapel?”
I could understand that. “Why did you believe it to be me?”
“You’d been to the chapel late at night on your own before. She was wearing your dress—the midnight-blue one that has crystals scattered about. And her hair and face were hooded.”
I savored a thought. “You remembered one of my dresses.”
He kissed my cheek. “I remember all of your dresses,” he said after pulling away.
I smiled at that. “What . . . what did Michelene want?”
“I’m sure you can guess. Once she’d tricked me into coming to the chapel, it became clear that she was interested in further . . . discovering if we had mutual interests. It was something she had subtly suggested earlier, when the imposter had engaged her as a lady’s maid.”
“Do you understand men?” Michelene had asked me. “I do.”
I couldn’t believe it. “But she’s wanted me to look pretty and . . .” Had I been deceived all round? She most certainly had taken one liberty too many.
“She couldn’t very well stay at the house as a lady’s maid if there was no lady, now, could she?” His tone was still gentle, his face open and honest. “She wanted a liaison and also thought if she could persuade me to stay with you, then you’d have the resources for a maid and she and I could . . . I left as soon as I understood.”
Impulsively, I reached to touch his open, honest face. I was so, so very glad he had not been with another woman of his own accord, I practically bled relief. I cupped his chin, feeling the brusque beginnings of whiskers graze against my soft palm. I left it there for a moment, exulting. “I cannot take it in that not only are you still here, in England, I am touching you.” I quickly took my hand away. “Forgive me.”
He took my hand in his own and placed it back on his face. “I can’t,” he said simply. “That would require your being sorry.”
“And I’m not,” I replied.
He laughed aloud and then I did, too. “I shall never tire of that sound,” he said. “Why did you go to London?”
“After reading the Tamil inscription, and learning that you’d instructed Daniel to send her back to India, I needed to see if I could find someone who knew the Indian maid,” I said. “And I did. I found her friend, and she explained all to me.”
“You read the writing in the room the imposter had slept in?” He looked downward. “I worried it implicated me in some way. That she’d written something in revenge.”
“It did not implicate you,” I said. “And her name was Violet.”
“Violet?”
“The imposter. She was my friend.”
He stood and stirred the fire himself so that no one would have an excuse to disturb us. I was astonished he had no reaction until he spoke. “I knew that.”
“You knew it was Violet?” I had thought to surprise him but instead, he had surprised me!
“I did not know her name. But I knew she was your friend.” He sat back down. �
�One day you had been speaking with Miss Dainley and had shared how you and a friend had a love of stones whilst growing up together in India. Yours, you said, was moonstone. One of your friends loved cat’s-eye. The woman who was here pretending to be you loved cat’s-eye; among her few possessions she’d brought some. Once I’d buried her, and realized she had no family or anything personal, I went through her room looking for them, found them, and had them affixed to her gravestone.”
The lights I’d seen flickering on dark nights would have been moonlight hitting the cat’s-eyes. So very much like Violet’s little cat, Marie. “So you removed them from the gravestone after Delia told you.” This must have been the friendship turn Delia had mentioned, though, in light of her other offenses, it hardly seemed noteworthy.
“Yes,” he said. “I did not want you to know you’d been betrayed by a friend. You—you had so few friends and I wanted to protect your memories.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said, looking into his eyes. Our chairs were side by side but for a small table between us that I suddenly wished was gone. The fire had warmed me through by now. Or perhaps it had been the man who’d done that. His mentioning Delia brought another question to mind.
“What were you and Delia arguing about when I saw you riding from the downs toward the stables?”
“She told me that everyone knew I’d had a hand in your imposter’s death, that she could overlook it because she understood what the house meant to me, and that my character was good in spite of it all. She made clear, though, what you’ve likely noticed. I can have no life in Hampshire. Everyone suspects me, and I and mine would always be under a cloud of distrust.” He stood and stirred the fire again. “She said it did not matter to her, and we could move to Derbyshire and start fresh. She said you’d never forgive me if you knew I had a hand in the death of your childhood friend.”
Oh! That I might go and retrieve my mother’s dress from her. I pitied the man who would receive her in it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “She was unkind, at the very least.”
“I am sorry, too,” he said. “I never wanted to marry her; she is much like my mother. But at that moment, I realized once and for all that you and I could never live happily here. People would always suspect that I had killed your friend, even though I know she killed herself. They’d been thinking that for months. I’d have lived in dread that you would find out it was your friend and hate me for it. Even now, people will think I married you for Headbourne. I’d made it plain how much I desired it. After Miss Dainley made it clear that everyone still suspected me, and I knew by their reactions to me that she was right, that there was no way to clear my name, I knew what I must do.”
“Which was?”
“Withdraw from you,” he said, pain in his voice. “This would be no life for you after all you have already undergone and lost. People wondering if I wanted you or the house, making you the target of insinuations, the focus of looks in the streets as we drove by. I did not want you to live under the stigma of it all. Did not want the . . . suspicion attached to your children. Our children.”
Our children. I relished the sound of it. He sat down again and I knelt before him and took both his hands in mine. “Once, many months ago, you cleared my name as you declared me the rightful heir. I can clear your name from any wrongdoing,” I said softly.
“You cannot,” he said. “There is no one left to prove that I did not have a hand in it. Because, even though she took her own life, I pushed her toward it, not realizing how fragile she was. I am culpable. I said things I shouldn’t have said.”
“That you would inform the constable of her duplicity?”
“How did you know that?”
“The Indian maid’s friend told me.”
He looked miserable. “She knew I suspected her, the left hand, and that I was having a friend of your brother’s come to the house. It was that last fact, I suspect, that pushed her to the edge. If I hadn’t done that, perhaps she’d still be alive.”
“You tested me, repeatedly, and I did not harm myself.”
He cocked his head. It seemed to be a new realization. “That is true.” I returned to my seat and leaned in close and shared what Sattiyayi had told me about the Dr. Warburg’s Tincture and Violet’s intent to murder him by switching his Warburg’s with the bottle she had poisoned as soon as she knew he’d suspected her to be an imposter. “Perhaps when you were to force the last truth, with Dunn, she knew you’d be wary or perhaps she didn’t have it in her heart to kill you when it came down to it. Knowing her, that is what I believe.”
His eyes widened and he stood up abruptly before sitting down again. “Murder me? I would never have suspected she’d try that; I’m thankful it didn’t get that far. If she hadn’t died . . . I might have.”
I nodded. “It is possible, and I shan’t ever understand it completely. And I shall never fully be able to get beyond the fact that Violet tried to kill you. She grew cold when her father took her and her mother to Ceylon, where her mother died, and then he took up with a Ceylonese woman. Although Violet had returned to visit India several times a year. She hadn’t had a mother for some time—would not, perhaps, have even been aware how important it would have been for her to have a chaperone here.”
“She didn’t have one,” Luke said. “Mrs. Blackwood tried to look out for her. She suggested a chaperone. The young lady declined. That was a first clue.”
“Perhaps she worried that with a chaperone she’d be caught out,” I said. “She heard that our family had perished, and believing us all dead, began to weave her facade. She probably thought no one would be hurt—I was dead to her—and then became entangled beyond her ability to cope.”
I knew, now, who lay in that grave. I should have to write to her father.
“I am not to blame.” His face took a wry and sad twist before he composed himself again.
“You are not to blame, in fact, you did a generous thing in ensuring her ayah would not be accused and in giving her money to leave England.”
We were inches apart. He leaned toward me and kissed my top lip, and then my bottom lip, and then both of them at once. He stood and then pulled me to my feet before embracing me, which said, I shall protect you, and then stroked my hair, which said, I adore you, and then kissed me in a way that conveyed I desire you. My mind swirled away and I could hardly breathe, but I wanted to, because when I did, I breathed in his breath, his essence, and it bonded us.
The library door was open, but in the face of convention I kissed him back, unreservedly, before he whispered in my ear, “And into all things from her air inspired the spirit of love and amorous delight. She disappeared, and left me dark; I waked to find her, or for ever to deplore her loss, and other pleasures all abjure: When out of hope, behold her, not far off, such as I saw her in my dream, adorned with what all Earth or Heaven could bestow.”
“Paradise Lost,” I said, pulling back a little in wonder. “Had you memorized that section for me, too? You’d thought we were to be no more.”
“Mostly,” he said. “But for the first time in many years, I allowed myself a flicker of hope. I had hoped to speak with you at my mother’s ball. I knew I should utterly forsake you for your own good but I found that, in spite of my best efforts, I could not.”
“And I am very glad of it.” Then I blushed. “I’m so sorry for what I said to your brother at the ball.”
He took my face between his hands. “I am not. I knew then that you loved me as I love you.”
“You love me,” I said in quiet wonder.
“If I haven’t made that quite clear, then please accept my apologies, Miss Ravenshaw. I love you. I unreservedly, undeniably, unconditionally, uncontrollably love you.”
“And I, you.” I reached up to touch his face, too. “I have become quite expert at reclaiming what is mine, Luke. My house, my land, my name. My man.” I smiled be
fore jesting. “Shall you depart for the East Indies, then?”
“By no means.” He pulled me toward himself once more. “But I will not stay at Lord Ledbury’s long, either.”
I smiled. “Other accommodations can be arranged. But not an irregular union.” At that, he laughed again. “And I shall need my chaperone to attend me at all times until . . .”
“Until we are wed,” he said quietly. “If you’ll have me.”
“Until we are wed. I will have you.”
Oh, Lord. I have my house, my security and peace, and happiness. You have truly restored it all. Thank you.
Luke had a coach take me back to Headbourne House. I went directly to my room and closed the door tightly. I did not want to speak to anyone, especially Michelene, until I had gathered my thoughts. By morning, I was prepared to confront her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I called Michelene into the drawing room then closed the door.
“Are you ill?” she asked. “You did not call for me for two days.” She came over as if to observe me for signs of disease.
“Please, have a seat,” I said. She chose the chair farthest from me and eyed me suspiciously.
“It has come to my attention,” I said, “that you have been wearing my gowns.”
“Oh!” she said. “You mean the lettuce one and the yellow one that you had given me.”
I had forgotten about those. “No, not any I had cast off. ” I regretted, now, not insisting that they go to charity. “I mean the blue one encrusted with crystals.”
Real fear crossed her deep brown eyes. “What do you mean? I have it for mending.”
“You wore it to meet Captain Whitfield,” I said. “At the chapel.”
“Ah.” She raised her eyebrow. “Yes, yes. He requested the rendez-vous with me. I did not understand—until I arrived—what exactly he had in mind. Once I arrived, and realized that he wanted me to accompany him through the tradesman’s entrance to the guesthouse, I fled.”