Lady Silence

by Blair Bancroft

  “Don’t be an ass,” the major growled. “We are all friends here. You don’t use a female who looks like that for nothing but writing your letters. Tell us what she’s like. Don’t credit that prim and proper exterior one whit. There’s a great deal more, now ain’t there? Come, man, don’t be so noble.”

  Damon—who, like the others, had drunk far more than he should—tossed off the last of his brandy, plunked his glass onto the table. “Very well. She’s a minx, a veritable minx. With a piquant sense of humor, even a mischief that bubbles up and over at the most unexpected moments. She drives me mad when she leans over my desk. Climbing the bookroom ladder is worse, with her ankles showing and her bum wiggling—”

  The colonel broke off, with a groan. “She’s also my mama’s pet and the darling of my household staff. Which means if I touch her, I’ll likely find an emetic in my soup, if not arsenic or ground glass.”

  “Poor sod,” Chet Thayne murmured, appalled.

  “You can’t mean she’s willing but you ain’t,” Fox exclaimed, if a bit muzzily.

  Damon swore. “Didn’t say that. She’s . . . enticing. Doesn’t work at it.”

  “Said she waggles her—”

  “Quiet!”

  “So you ain’t bedding her, but you’d like to,” pronounced Captain Thayne judiciously after several seconds of silence broken only by the soft hissing of the fire.

  Damon reached for the brandy bottle, found it empty. How fortunate he’d had the foresight to have Rankin place two extra bottles beside the decanter on the table before seeking his bed, for Damon doubted he could cross the room to find another bottle, let alone negotiate the precipitous stone steps down to the wine cellar. Alas, they were now down to the last bottle. In spite of being almost as foxed as the night the three of them had celebrated his leaving the regiment, he made short work of opening the brandy. He poured, sniffed . . . discovered his nose was well past savoring even the finest French brandy. Odd that the English had such a taste for the enemy’s brew.

  He drank. “Demmed female,” the colonel grumbled. “All I wanted was quiet. Time to be alone. And there she is, day after day, cutting up my peace. Even in Ashby’s last days, when he was cramming my head with barley and sheep and drainage and God only knows what else, I could see her hovering, right there in his bedchamber, haunting me. At a time like that!” Mournfully, guiltily, the colonel refilled his snifter.

  “Only one thing to do,” Fox declared. “Must have her, dear boy. Only cure. So she tells your mama. Set the chit up in a cottage. Teach her all the right tricks. You’d be doing her a favor. Girl’s far better off as a courtesan. All that beauty’s going to waste here in the country. The best of everything awaits her in the city. She’ll have all the fine gentl’men nosin’ about. Fascinating concept, a female who don’t talk.”

  Why wasn’t he grabbing Fox up? Damon wondered. Planting him a facer? Why was he sitting here, actually listening to this oaf, mouthing . . . offal.

  An oaf mouthing offal. Amusing, Farr, most amusing. Perhaps he should set up a group of players for the next church fair.

  Horrified, that’s what he should be. Yet the picture Fox was painting was simply too tempting. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had similar thoughts himself, but his last remnants of honor had prevailed.

  Yet what was honor to a girl who was nobody? What right did she have to expect the treatment due a young lady of good family?

  She’d earned it.

  Hell!

  He should be telling old Foxy what he could do with his advice. And with his salacious projections for Katy Snow’s future. Yet he continued to sit, silent and glum, knowing that in some twisted way his friend was right. Katy was the light trapped under a bushel, the country beauty confined by convention into a role that did not suit her. Oh, yes, Fox was right. Katy Snow had too much spirit to spend the rest of her days as a companion.

  Not as companion to a female. Damon smirked.

  The brandy fumes rose in his brain, circulating with insidious thoroughness until honor be damned, only the battle-hardened soldier, reacting to the urge to save himself, was left. Hadn’t Wellington himself rewarded his troops with a day or two of sampling the cities they’d fought so hard to conquer?

  “A test,” Damon proposed. “Let us devise a test.”

  His fellow officers raised their heads, as befuddled by their colonel’s words as they were by drink.

  “You, dear sirs,” said Damon, “may have the privilege of discovering how the chit reacts to a bit of flirtation. Let her choose her own fate. Track her down wherever she is to be found and do your worst. You may, I believe, even find her in the woods in the early morning, as my brother granted her a mount.”

  A slow, if lop-sided, smile spread across Major Foxbourne’s handsome face. “By jove, Farr, but that’s good of you.”

  “Not this morning,” said Captain Thayne, for I believe it’s morning already and I swear I’d have to be poured into the saddle.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” said his colonel.

  “No, but if I’m to accost a female, I’d like to be capable of enjoying it.”

  “Capable,” Fox mumbled. “That’s it . . . must be capable.”

  In the end, not surprisingly, the three military gentlemen fell asleep in their chairs, where they remained until Rankin aroused them in time to set themselves to rights before nuncheon.

  Katy, atop the lovely chestnut mare Lord Moretaine had said she might ride, scowled at a perfectly innocent rowan tree, whose red berries were as yet unfaded by the advent of fall. Damon could not be Moretaine! Surely, life could not be so cruel.

  But, of course, it was. Had she not learned that at an early age?

  Katy urged her horse to a gallop, sweeping down a narrow track that meandered along a stream that marked the boundary of a field of knee-high hay. Ah! The wind buffeted her heated thoughts, while threatening to dislodge the cavalry blue shako that matched her elegant new riding habit, resplendent with white braid. She leaned forward in the saddle, savoring these few moments of freedom after all the sorrow, almost as if she feared they might not come her way again. She reveled in pounding hooves, the freshness of the air, the rush of the small stream, the scent of rich earth, the closeness of life all around her—plants, animals, insects . . .

  And a few moments of freedom from people and the vicissitudes of an outside world that would not leave her alone.

  How very small of her to rail against Fate. She was a better person than that. But she was young and full of hope, however foolish. Mind and heart clasped her complaint close, refusing to let go. Damon, her Damon, should not be Earl of Moretaine. During the month she had spent at his side in the Farr Park bookroom, her girlish fantasies about Damon Farr, dashing cavalry officer, had withered and died. And been reborn as compassion for the man whose wounds were not of the flesh but of the soul. And gradually become so much more, as she caught glimpses of the kinder, more thoughtful man hidden beneath the cold military façade. There were, after all, enough shining lights on her family tree—if a bit tarnished here and there—to allow the waif to build castles in the air. Damon of Farr Park, if truth were told, was not so far above her touch.

  The Earl of Moretaine most certainly was.

  A peer might look as high as he pleased for a wife. Every matchmaking mama and predatory daughter avid for a title, was going to be after him. Leaving the chances of a girl whose only claim to a title was the colonel’s derogatory designation, Lady Silence, no hope at all.

  Katy slowed her chestnut to a mincing walk, allowing the mare to approach the stream and dip her head for a cooling drink. Fortunate animal. She herself would have to wait until she returned to Castle Moretaine. Katy sniffed the breeze. Almost, it seemed, she could smell coffee, bacon, and hot muffins. But it was such an unusually fine day, rich with sunshine and crisp autumn air . . . and she had not been beyond the walls of Castle Moretaine for a full five days.

  Not far ahead was a copse which, she had d
iscovered, hid an intimate glen obviously designed for the pleasure of Castle Moretaine’s residents and guests, for it featured a curved marble bench where one might sit and enjoy the view while basking in the beauty and solitude of the moment. The bubbling stream with water meadows beyond, birdsong of amazing variety, and glorious privacy—as if the world and its cares no longer existed.

  There she could dismount and fill her aching soul with serenity, for the marble bench also served as a fine mounting block. Katy’s lips curled in wry laughter at herself. Kate, the pragmatical. The girl who found a way over and around all obstacles.

  Until now.

  The glen was waiting. Perhaps, today, it held inspiration, a solution to her problems. Katy patted the horse’s neck, drew up the reins, and headed her mount toward the copse.

  After his abominably late start on the day after the funeral, Damon had vowed to do better today. But when he reached the stables, he discovered his friends were more spry than he. Gone out a half hour since, the groom told him.

  Grief and alcohol were lethal enemies of the brain, but the colonel had not survived nearly seven years of war without developing keen instincts. Instincts that did not lay down, roll over, and fall asleep just because he was wallowing in a sea of conflicting emotions. An alarm shivered through him. There was something he should remember . . .

  The library. Brandy. He’d told Fox and Thayne about Katy. All about Katy, from her arrival at Farr Park to his doubts about her character . . . to his speculations that her demure exterior hid a questing spirit, deserving to be freed. Hell! He’d even told them about her morning rides. He’d suggested . . . encouraged them to test her, see how far she would go.

  Drunken sot that he was, he’d set them on her!

  To punish her for tempting him?

  He should be drawn and quartered!

  “Is Katy Snow riding this morning?” Damon snapped.

  “Aye, col—m’lord. Hasn’t been out since the poor earl—God rest his soul—passed on, but today she was here, same as usual.”

  “Which way?”

  “She mostly goes east, m’lord. Path along the stream. Or so it seems from what I can see from ’ere,” he added a trifle hastily. “Sometimes she rides into the village, but seems a tad early for that.”

  Damon leaped on Volcán, jerked the reins from the groom’s hands, and galloped off. Even as he castigated himself for being in such a lather over what was likely nothing, he tried to recall his exact words. Flirtation. Surely he’d only mentioned flirtation. Test the chit, see if she made eyes at every man she met. Hadn’t his own steward been caught in her snare? The doctor? That damned footman? Even the Castle Moretaine groom had kept track of her comings and goings.

  Flirtation, he’d said . . . yet he had implied that Katy was a female of no discernible background, a servant without protection.

  Do your worst.

  He could not have said it.

  Do your worst. Yes, he had.

  Hell and the Devil confound it! He’d all but handed her to them on a silver platter. A succulent treat complete with the piquant sauce of her mysterious background.

  Gritting his teeth, Damon slowed to a trot as he entered the wooded ride at the edge of the park, then burst back into a gallop as a patch of sunlight signaled a clearing ahead. Hay fields to the left, the stream and water meadows to the right. Here . . . she had to be here somewhere. If he failed her, he was forever damned.

  The land was nearly flat. He rounded a clump of willows drooping over a bend in the stream, fully expecting to see her . . . and his so-called friends as well.

  Nothing. Just tall waving grass, the dirt path, and bubbling stream.

  Damon pulled up his horse, swearing softly. If she wasn’t here, he’d never find her. The grounds of Castle Moretaine comprised five thousands acres. Blast the woman! Where was she?

  They’d found her, damn them. Fox and Thayne. They were hiding somewhere, doing God knew what. Damon’s rage soared. She was his. How dare they lay a hand on his woman?

  Or was she giving herself to them, embarking freely on a new life with a new set of protectors?

  Blood pounded in his ears. Volcán, sensing his rider’s unrest, snorted and stamped his hooves. Grimly, the new Earl of Moretaine brought him under control. Not far ahead was a small copse, planted by his grandfather to add scenic beauty to this ride along the river. Very well, he’d go that far and not an inch farther. Why make an ass of himself, playing Knight Errant? Foolish chit probably didn’t want to be rescued anyway.

  And then he heard the scream. A high-pitched penetrating ululation that sent even the battle-tested Volcán into a skittering caracole. Katy! Katy was in trouble.

  And it was all his fault.

  But somewhere in that hundred yards to the copse, a new, more terrible, thought clicked into place. Fury gripped him. If Katy could scream, she could talk.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Fifteen

  Katy was only part way into the stand of trees at the east end of the hay field, thoroughly enjoying the sun-dappled shade and delicious privacy provided by a fine mix of oak, mulberry, and elm, when she heard hoof-beats behind her. Damon! He’d followed her . . . was looking for her.

  The hoof-beats were rather loud. He wasn’t alone. Her shoulders slumped in disappointment. Katy brought her mare to a halt. With the curve of the path obscuring her vision, she could only wait and wonder.

  Major Foxbourne and Captain Thayne! In vain she looked for Damon. The light dimmed, the forest grew cold. Ridiculous to feel danger here, but Katy shivered. There was something about the way they were looking at her. Her breath caught in her throat. Dear God, she recognized that look! But surely they wouldn’t . . . not their colonel’s mama’s companion on the earl’s own lands.

  They closed in, one on either side, much too close for a conventional exchange of polite greetings. The three mounts were but inches apart. “Miss Snow,” Major Foxbourne purred, “how delightful. We hoped we might meet you this morning.”

  Katy granted them a cool nod, even as she withdrew into herself, vowing to find a way to keep them from touching her. For that’s what they wanted, she knew it. At twelve, she had run from that look. Later, the boys in the village had evidently decided that her position at Farr Park protected her from touching, but not from naked glimpses of what they would like to do. Oh, yes, she knew naked lust when she saw it. Cool, calculated lust, without a hint of hesitation. Which, in itself, seemed odd. Decidedly odd.

  They had her pinned now, there in the narrow path, their large geldings intimidating her dainty mare as easily as the two officers were intimidating her. They were speaking, making incredible suggestions, not of using her for themselves, as she had expected, but of her becoming the earl’s mistress, allowing him to set her on the path to life as a famous London courtesan. Such beauty was wasted in the country, they told her. She was destined for far better. The finest of everything laid at her feet. She would mingle with the men of the ton, the wealthy and powerful—noble men who had defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and were destined to rule the vast empire Britain was establishing around the world.

  Now was the time to speak up . . . to tell them what she thought of their grand scheme. That they must be mad to wave whoredom before her as if it were a high treat.

  But her lips refused to move. Her tongue, so long disused, sat like a lump of clay in her mouth. Whatever the mechanism that allowed people to talk, it had rusted over. Or was it her brain that was frozen, unable to transmit the command? Perhaps she simply could not believe two officers, supposedly gentlemen, could speak to her so.

  “I believe she needs encouragement,” Major Foxbourne said to Captain Thayne. “Hard to believe such a beauty’s a skittish virgin, but there you have it. I suppose anything is possible.”

  “Virgins bring a higher price,” Thayne agreed, pressing his mount directly into the mare’s flank. “Colonel’s panting so hard after you, you could have anything you want,” he said to Katy. “A hou
se in St. John’s Woods, silk gowns, your own carriage and pair, diamonds draping every part of you.” His salacious gaze examined her tight-fitting military-style habit from head to toe. Again, Katy shivered.

  “A kiss,” declared Foxbourne. “Warm her up with a kiss, that’s the ticket. Try her out a bit, see if she’s worthy of our colonel.” He leaned forward, one arm snaking about her waist.

  Katy thwacked her riding crop against the side of his head. The major swore. Combat was short-lived. The riding crop disappeared into the underbrush, and Katy found herself twisted hard against Foxbourne’s chest, his furious face descending toward hers.

  “I say . . .” Captain Thayne interjected, belatedly recognizing that their “flirtation” had gone out of control.

  Harsh lips bruised Katy’s. Punishment, not lust. When the major finally eased the fierce pressure, Katy snapped her teeth over his lower lip, biting down hard. Foolish, perhaps, but oh-so-satisfying.

  He boxed her ears.

  “Major!” Captain Thayne roared, but Foxbourne had gone beyond reason, back to the beserker days of the worst of the Peninsula. He leaped from the saddle, dragging Katy with him, his hands tearing at the buttons of her habit even as they fell.

  For Katy, all the old horrors came back, bursting past the dam she had so carefully erected. She had promised herself she would not think of it, would not remember. And then the Hardcastles had come to Castle Moretaine. And now this.

  She had saved herself once. She could do so again. She only had to open her mouth and scream. Surely someone would hear her. Someone would come.

  If she screamed loud enough, perhaps the major would come to his senses. Yes, surely it must be so. Foxbourne could not truly intend to have her here, on the earl’s own acres and in front of his friend.

  But to make a sound—particularly a loud sound—after so many years . . .

  The front of her habit was open, exposing the fine lawn of the shirt inside. His hands were ripping at the thin fabric . . .