Lady Silence

by Blair Bancroft

  Lady Silence

  by Blair Bancroft

  Published by Kone Enterprises

  at Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 by Grace Ann Kone

  For other books by Blair Bancroft,

  please see http://www.blairbancroft.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

  ~ * ~

  1Prologue

  Wiltshire, February 1809

  She did not think of herself as a child, for she was all of twelve. And the last four months had been harsh and bitter, aging her from credulous schoolgirl to shrewd, calculating survivor. But tonight, caught in the early dark of winter, with snow beginning to fall, she feared the end was near. Exhausted, hungry, and ever so cold, she could do little more than put one foot before the other and pray for a light, any glimmer that might signal a cottage, a farm, a wayside inn. A hovel or barn would do.

  Her half-boots were worn through from walking. She could feel the freezing dampness seeping through to her equally worn woolen stockings. Her stomach growled. She shivered and clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering. Then opened her mouth again to catch a snowflake on her tongue, licking it greedily, for her throat was parched and her lips dry from walking, walking, walking, searching for a kind face, a slice of bread, a few moment’s warmth by a kitchen fire.

  She must have taken a wrong fork after being shooed out of the last village, for the road had dwindled to little more than a cart track and, now, to a mere footpath. She trudged on. If she’d had a tear left in her, now would have been the time to shed it. But she’d cried them out—for the parents she wished she might have known, for the grandmother she barely remembered, and for her beloved grandfather who was all that was good and kind and true. She’d cried for being sent to unwelcoming strangers. For venomous words. For bruises that turned her fair skin every shade of blue, black, purple and, later, green.

  What was cold and hunger compared to what she had escaped?

  Yet somehow the freedom to die on a lonely road to nowhere was not such a fine freedom after all.

  The girl gasped, rocked to an abrupt halt, her once fine cloak swirling around her. Too frightened to move, she pulled the cloak tight about her shoulders and simply stared. She seemed to have reached the top of one of the many low rolling hills in the area, for below her was spread out the wondrous glow of a tidy estate, an impressively large house and stables. Perhaps a party was in progress, for the house was ablaze with lights and torches lined the carriageway.

  Her knees buckled. Clenching her fists, even as she offered a swift prayer of thanks, the girl who had given up childhood, vowed that this time things would be different. Below her was not only shelter, but home. She would make it so.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter One

  “Mad as a hatter, the master,” Cook declared. “Goin’ off to fight the Frenchies when he could stay snug as a bug right here. Don’t need money nor glory, not him. Got all a man needs right ’ere at Farr Park.”

  “Indeed—if he feels so strong about king and country, he could buy a commission for some local lad without a feather to fly with,” declared Humphrey Mapes, butler to Mr. Damon Farr. “Or get up his own militia. Many of the toffs are doing that, I hear.”

  “Shame to you both!” cried Millicent Tyner, Mr. Farr’s housekeeper. “The Frenchies came that close to wiping out our army at Corunna, and you expect a lad of his courage to stay at home and read of the war with his morning beefsteak?”

  “But his uncle, the nabob, left him all that money,” wailed Betty Huggins, the Cook. “Why should he go and get himself killed?”

  “Because he’s two and twenty, too young for sense,” Mapes grumbled.

  “Courageous,” said Mrs. Tyner proudly.

  “Foolish,” Cook sniffed.

  “Did you hear something?” Mapes asked.

  “A scratching,” the housekeeper agreed, “but couldn’t be someone at the door on a night like this. Perhaps it’s time to put out poison for the mice again.”

  “There!” said Cook. “‘Twas the door, not mice.”

  All three stared at the rear kitchen door as if they expected a ghost to walk through. No one would be foolish enough to be out on a night like this.

  “A groom sent to fetch a pint or two to warm their gullets at the stables,” Mapes pronounced, and all three faces of Mr. Damon Farr’s primary staff smoothed with relief at this reasonable explanation. The butler strode to the door with his usual confident step, unbarred it, and inched it open. Snow swirled in, instantly melting on flagstones warmed by the kitchen’s great fireplace.

  “Merciful heavens,” said Cook.

  Humphrey Mapes stared, even as he opened the door wide enough to accommodate the slim width of the child outside.

  “Not a mouse,” declared Mrs. Tyner, “but she surely looks like something the cat dragged in.”

  She also looked wet, cold, hungry, utterly exhausted, and very young. Not even the hardest heart could have turned the girl away on a dark night in the midst of a snowstorm. So, while Mr. Damon Farr enjoyed the company of a few friends chosen to join him in a last riotous evening before he left for a commission in the cavalry, a lost child gobbled food below stairs. Her fingers might shake, her teeth might continue to chatter, but her determination was hardening into Damascus steel. She had finally found good kind people. Here she would stay. Somehow.

  “Well, child,” said Mrs. Tyner, when the lost waif’s plate was polished clean and not a drop of milk was left in her mug, “what’s your name, and how came you to be out alone on a night such as this?”

  The girl raised a pair of stunningly lovely, long-lashed green eyes to the housekeeper, who was standing over her, black bombazine gown bristling with the authority of her office. The eyes widened, the child’s entire body radiated distress.

  “Well?” Mrs. Tyner snapped. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Solemnly, the girl nodded.

  Mapes and Mrs. Tyner exchanged an incredulous look. Cook shook her head.

  “You can’t talk?” the butler demanded, none too gently. Again, the child nodded.

  “Everyone knows mutes don’t hear either,” said Mrs. Tyner, “yet you—”

  “Are you reading lips, girl?” Mapes snapped.

  The waif shook her head.

  “So you can hear me?” At an affirmative nod, the butler forgot himself enough to whistle through his teeth. “Well, what’s to be done with you I’m sure I don’t know.” He looked at the two women and shrugged.

  “Ain’t you the one, Mr. Mapes,” chided Betty, the Cook. “Think we’re goin’ to solve your problem for you.”

  “With the master going off to war, we don’t need extra help,” Mrs. Tyner mused. “She can find a warm corner for the night, but in the morning she’ll have to be on her way. Oh, for goodness sake, don’t shake your head, child. What else am I to do with you? Stop that! You’ll shake yourself to pieces.”

  But the child had dropped to her knees, clutching the housekeeper’s stiff gown as if she would never let go. And all the tim
e her head kept shaking. No, no, no, no, no!

  “Good God,” Mapes muttered. “Stop that at once!” He sighed. The child went still as a statue, still clinging to Mrs. Tyner’s bombazine skirt. “Do you have any skills, girl? Do you know how to serve in a gentleman’s household?”

  Slowly, with effort, the girl pushed herself to her feet. The green eyes took on shadowed depths. Her lower lip thrust slightly forward. She gave a sharp, decisive nod.

  Mapes glared at the girl who stood before him. A waif, a ragamuffin . . . yet her clothing had once been quality. Her eyes pleaded, even as they shot defiance. Proud as a peacock, she was. No second parlor maid, this one. With the Frenchies causing trouble again, few houses were hiring staff. If Farr Park turned her out, it was the workhouse. Or worse. Mapes took another look at those eyes, rich as emeralds, proud as Lucifer. No . . . as yet he judged her an innocent. A bud not yet plucked by the raw cruelties that could befall a lost child.

  Mapes pursed his lips, heaved a resigned sigh. There were, after all, limits to how hard-hearted even a butler could be. Looking down his nose at the bedraggled but defiant child, he announced, “In the morning I will discuss the matter with the master.”

  With almost regal bearing, the girl inclined her head in a nod of gracious acceptance. Almost, by God, Mapes thought, almost as if she were granting Farr Park the privilege of her presence.

  Desperate. She’d been so desperate she’d gone on her knees. To a housekeeper! Let her eyes beg favor of a butler.

  Fool! She’d found shelter, a possible home—yet after all she had suffered, pride still rankled, threatening her safety. When would she learn she had lost all claim to rank and privilege when she had run from the shelter provided for her? When would she learn to be humble, to fit into the world below stairs?

  Now. Now was the moment! Her wandering days were done.

  Meekly, with a smile of unfeigned gratitude, the girl allowed herself to be led away to the attics. Warm and dry and tucked up in a voluminous cotton nightdress, she settled into a warm featherbed and bid pride goodbye. Whatever it took, she would stay in this place. The unknown Mr. Farr must have a kind heart. She willed it so.

  Surely that wasn’t asking too much.

  But before she could dwell on her morning encounter with Mr. Farr, the child—safe, warm, and belly full—fell fast asleep.

  Damon Farr charged down the massive staircase at Farr Park, then instantly regretted it. Half-way along, he staggered, clutching the banister for support before proceeding at a far more decorous pace. He should never have had a party the night before his departure. A full day to recover would have been eminently sensible, but what his friends called his mad idea had come on so suddenly there had been no time for proper planning. The nightmare of Corunna had reverberated across the country. Half Britain’s army lost, the rest escaped by the skin of their teeth, thanks to evacuation by one of the greatest armadas since the Spaniards tried to conquer good Queen Bess.

  Of course he had to go. Britain’s honor was at stake. The army had to return to the Peninsula, and he was going to be one of them. But if he was to go off to war, he’d have to develop a harder head. Devil it, but it was going to be a nasty carriage ride to London.

  With considerable relief, Mr. Farr stepped down onto the marble tiles of his entry hall, leaving the jarring demands of the staircase behind. Feet. Legs. Livery. Skirts. He forced himself to look up, struggled to summon a smile. Of course his staff was waiting to say goodbye. He stood stiffly before them, not daring to nod, resigned, and vaguely pleased, that Mapes was undoubtedly about to launch into a formal farewell.

  Instead, the butler cleared his throat and said, “Before you go, Mr. Farr, there’s a matter needs to be set to rights.” He reached behind him, hauling forward a child Damon Farr had never seen before. A girl child, dressed in a brown horror of a gown obviously made for someone else. A child who held her disheveled blond head high and whose eyes stared straight back at him, equal to equal.

  “And what have we here, Mapes?” Damon asked.

  “A stray, sir. Came to the door last night in the snow. We—Mrs. Tyner and I—wondered if you might have a place for her, sir”

  A domestic crisis, that’s all he needed, with his head splitting open, and what little wits he had left firmly fixed on his new life in the cavalry.

  “You, girl,” Damon barked, “what’s your name and where are you from?”

  “Sir, she doesn’t talk,” Mrs. Tyner interjected.

  “Nonsense! Well, girl, answer me!” The green eyes went wide, the frail shoulders firmed. Chin high, she stared right back at him. Flaunting her defiance, by God.

  Truthfully, Damon had only seen such a sorry sight when his carriage passed through the teeming stews of London. Someone had made certain the girl had clean face and hands, but her hair was a tangled mass of dirty blond curls, and the gown that fit her like a flour sack must have come straight from the rag bag. Clearly, it was unfit even for the poor box.

  Well, what was a man to do? The parish took care of its own, but this child was a stranger, of that he was nearly certain. Undoubtedly, her fate was to be chased from parish to parish until she was snapped up by some girl-nabber and added to a London brothel. Hell and the devil! Damon’s head ached, his stomach churned.

  “She doesn’t look like she eats much,” he pronounced, settling the waif’s fate. “Doubtless you’ll find something for her to do.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Farr. Thank you, sir.” Mapes shooed the girl back into the crowd of servants. Once again, Mr. Farr turned toward the door. Mapes cleared his throat. Damon halted, swaying slightly as his devoted butler finally delivered the expected speech of farewell, to the accompaniment of an occasional sniff and one outright sob from a parlor maid, earning a glare of reproof from Mrs. Tyner. Mr. Farr managed the proper responses. Noblesse oblige. And only then could he descend the front steps and enter his waiting carriage. Where he suffered a perfectly abominable journey to London, his only consolation, thoughts of the grand new life awaiting him as an officer in one of His Majesty’s cavalry regiments. No thoughts of the blond child adopted into the confines of Farr Park so much as entered his head. In fact, the girl was of such small significance that he barely recalled her existence through his five years on the Peninsula, his months as an aide-de-camp at the Congress of Vienna, and certainly not during that final great battle in Belgium.

  He was, however, all too frequently forced to think of his sister-in-law, Drucilla, wife of his elder brother Ashby, Earl of Moretaine. For every time he received a letter from his mother, the young countess’s name was prominently mentioned. At first, with long-suffering, then indignation, and finally outrage. The dower house was not, it seemed, sufficiently removed from Castle Moretaine to make co-existence possible between the dowager and her daughter-in-law.

  Therefore, shortly after Talavera, when Captain Farr was laid up with a nasty saber slash to his thigh and had ample time to reflect on his mother’s plight, he offered her use of Farr Park during his absence. This seemed to serve quite well, as the dowager’s letters turned positively cheerful, if frequently dotted with references to a Katy. He did not recollect anyone of that name among his staff, so decided she must be some impecunious family connection employed by his mother as a companion.

  When, after six and a half years of war, Damon—now Lieutenant Colonel—Farr headed home, he was a far different man than the young fire-eater who gone off to war, expecting to lick the Frenchies in a year or two. His thoughts were all of Farr Park, of his mother and elder brother Ashby. Of English soil, English villages, the English language echoing around him like some litany of joy.

  Home. He was going home.

  To Farr Park, a cocoon of peace waiting to welcome him. At twenty-eight, he was an old man, longing for serenity. No guns, no blood, no mud. No blistering heat on the plains or shocking cold in the mountains. No smoky-eyed señoritas. Or mass graves. No bugle sounding the call to arms. No pounding hooves and gleaming sabe
rs. No letters to write to grieving relatives.

  Farr Park. Serenity. A box into which he could plunge and pull down the lid.

  Not all wounds of war ran red.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Two

  August 1815

  On the last few miles of his long trip home, Colonel Farr’s thoughts turned to his welcome at Farr Park. He groaned. Mapes would turn them all out again, standing stiff as boards in the hall or—devil take it!—perhaps lined up along the front drive like soldiers on parade. He wasn’t his brother the earl, all pomp and circumstance, pontificating in the House of Lords. He was just a country gentleman, who, like a fox just escaped from being torn to bits by a hunt pack, wished only to withdraw into his den and lick his wounds.

  But this time his mother would be among the crowd of servants. Or perhaps not. Would she choose to stay in the drawing room, asserting her right to a private reunion with her younger son? Her son, the stranger, who was nothing like the eager young man who had charged off to war with dreams of glory obliterating even the slightest hint of reality.

  The colonel swore, rather colorfully, in a combination of Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He would endure his welcome back to Farr Park, this last hurdle before freedom, as he had the war. And then he would draw his home and his land around him like a cloak of invisibility and retire from the world.

  At least for a while. Until he felt fit for the society of those who had not seen what he had seen nor, even in their wildest nightmares, done what he had done. Would his coming days at Farr Park be like the fantasy of the peace conference at Vienna—starched and pristine uniforms, glittering gowns, royalty and nobility from a dozen countries greedily dividing up Europe by day and dancing away the nights—dreamlike months sandwiched between the Peninsula and Waterloo? Or would the horror finally begin to fade? Would he once again be able to touch and be touched in something other than desperation?