She threw up her hands, her reticule swinging wildly about one wrist. “How, exactly, am I supposed to see myself? When I look in the mirror, I see someone who is supposed to be perfectly happy with her lot in life, pleased to have drawn the short straw of the sexes. I see someone who is expected to be thrilled at the ridiculous circus of a Season being pressed upon her, eager to give her dowry to a complete stranger. I see someone who is expected to change herself, her thoughts, her life, to become nothing more than what a man would make her.” She lowered her arms and drew a deep breath, bowing her head as she exhaled. “Well, that may be what is expected,” she said bitterly, “but that’s not me, Lord Branston. It will never be me.”
He stared down at her then, remembering how Lord Cardwell had once claimed his daughter was looking forward to the coming Season.
The man hadn’t known his sister very well.
And apparently he didn’t know his daughter either.
“Lucy,” he said softly. “Not every man expects a woman to change to suit him. You can trust me on that.”
She laughed, a rueful sound. “Don’t you see?” She shook her head. “That’s just the sort of thing an untrustworthy man would say. So save your breath, Lord Branston.” She drew a deep breath. “I’ve better uses for mine.”
From the Diary of Edith Lucille Westmore
July 15, 1820
I’d hoped all this talk of marriage might finally subside. After all, I’m a spinster by choice, no matter Reverend Wellsbury’s thunderous objections from the pulpit.
But after successfully putting Mr. Jamieson’s hopes to rest, it seems Mr. Bentley has stepped up his own peculiar notion of courtship.
It started with the roses. The bloody things started appearing—freshly cut—on the steps of Heathmore Cottage every morning. Never mind that I hate roses. There is only one man in town with rosebushes, and while Mr. Bentley would make someone else a fine husband, he doesn’t make my heart flutter in anticipation of seeing him on Sundays, or tempt me to sew red ribbons on my petticoats. When I pulled him aside after church to try to explain we must only be friends, Reverend Wellsbury scowled terribly at us, as though he thinks I might be trying to poison the postmaster of Lizard Bay.
Or worse, trying to seduce him.
Well, I have no intention of seducing Mr. Bentley. Quite the opposite, in fact. When he didn’t take the hint, I took the necessary step of ordering a supply of fireworks from London. Then, I waited up one night, and when I saw Mr. Bentley sneaking through the rocks, I lit the fuse and plugged my ears. The poor sweet man screamed like a baby. His hearing’s been a bit off ever since, which I regret, but I believe he understands how things must be between us now.
The roses have finally stopped, thank goodness.
Now if only Reverend Wellsbury’s scowls would stop as well . . .
Chapter 13
On Friday morning Lucy rose early and hurried through her morning ablutions before the sun was even slipping through the lace curtains of her window. She buttoned herself back into her tired gold walking gown, wincing at the layer of dust now coating the hem of her skirts. If she stayed, she needed to sort out what to do about laundry.
But she hadn’t the faintest clue how to start.
So she tore down the stairs in her rumpled gown, scattering cats and hairpins in her wake. She refused to question her motives for rising at such an early hour.
She was in Cornwall—country hours applied.
And an early start was surely advisable, given the importance of succeeding in her mission today.
Her father could appear at any moment, and that meant there was no time to lose. She’d shown remarkable restraint so far, waiting to find someone to help her. Today she would find someone in this town who would show her the way to Heathmore.
And by someone, of course, she meant anyone who wasn’t Lord Branston.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t happily catch a peek of him before she started her day.
She didn’t quite understand this strange attraction where he was concerned. She was supposed to hate him. Had more or less told him she hated him. And still she was rising at dawn, earlier than necessary, simply because she wanted to catch a glimpse of him.
She tumbled into a melee of a breakfast, boys and cats intermingling in a rush of eggs and buttered toast. Mrs. Wilkins was bustling about like a busy shepherdess, but when she saw Lucy she beamed. “Ooooh, you’re up early today.” She pulled out a chair. “Come sit down and entertain the boys. Young Danny was just threatening to play truant, and Lord Branston was explaining why that was a poor idea.”
Lucy caught her breath to see Branston sitting at the far end of the long table. Much as he had yesterday, he looked anything but a gentleman. In his loose frockcoat and collarless shirt, he looked closer to a field laborer than a marquess. Would anyone in London be caught dead at the breakfast table in anything less than a starched collar and necktie?
And would she rise so early to see any of them?
She willed her pulse to settle into only a mildly exuberant rhythm as she settled herself into the chair Mrs. Wilkins had pulled out. “Truant, hmmm?” She smiled at Danny, who was looking down at his plate, his bright red hair falling over his eyes. She remembered that Branston was ostensibly trying to convince Danny to study so he might eventually have a chance at qualifying for more advanced schooling. “And what does Lord Branston have to say about that?”
Danny made a sour face. “He says I need more practice with my ciphers.”
Lucy laughed as Mrs. Wilkins sat a plate down in front of her with one hand and scooped up a cat with the other. “It seems to me that an enterprising young man such as yourself could only benefit from a strong start in the mathematical sciences. Thievery is all well and good, but if you can’t count your spoils, what good is the skill?”
“ ’Twasn’t me who stole your money, that was Ethan.” Danny pouted. “But that’s what Lord Branston says, too.”
“Really?” Lucy risked another covetous glance at the man who had pulled her so early from bed this morning with nothing more than the hope of crossing his path. He saluted her with a raised brow in return. “Well, Lord Branston is an educated man.” Her cheeks heated. “Studied botany in school, useful skill that it is. He can tell you the names of any plant you want, even the poisonous ones. You might want to listen to him.”
Over the edge of his cup, Lord Branston’s grin was slow, sure, and spreading. “Does that mean you will listen to me as well?” he asked down the barrel of the table.
Lucy shook her head. “I already know my ciphers, Lord Branston. So you shouldn’t bet on it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t.” His eyes crinkled, daring her to commit all matter of folly. “Impossible wagers were never my style, Miss L.”
Danny squirmed in his chair. “It’s just that I hate math. I’d much rather go walking on the moors. But Lord Branston said he won’t take me today.” He scowled. “Says I belong in the schoolroom, where I can learn something more practical than botany.”
Lucy regarded Lord Branston curiously. Walks on the moors? That was interesting. And a bit confusing. His leather satchel—suspiciously thinner than it had been yesterday—was slung in wait over the high back of his chair. She thought back on her chance meeting with him yesterday, when he’d looked so tousled and windblown, and how she had wondered where he passed his day.
Just what was Lord Branston up to?
And what did it have to do with Heathmore?
As though he could read her mind, he set down his cup and stood up, slinging the satchel’s strap across one broad shoulder. “Time to go then, boys. We mustn’t be late.”
The boys began gulping down the last bits of breakfast, then picked up the lunch pails that Mrs. Wilkins handed out. As Danny stood up and began to trudge toward his fate, Lucy motioned him closer, buttoning up the boy’s faded jacket and cuffing him on the chin when she was done. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Danny nodded mor
osely.
She leaned toward his ear. “My brother hates math, too, and he’s going to be a viscount. So you’re in good company.”
Danny jerked a finger toward Lord Branston. “Yes, but he’s a marquess. You have to listen to a marquess. Everyone says so.”
Lucy looked down the table, wishing the man didn’t make her stomach churn so pleasantly, wishing she could just trust him enough to believe his offer of assistance held no ulterior motives. “Well I don’t have to listen to him,” she told Danny. “And once you’ve learned your ciphers, you won’t have to either.”
As the boys and their mentor trooped out to start their day, Mrs. Wilkins approached to gather the empty plates. “Now, what was all that business about?” she chided in her gentle way. “It almost sounds as though you don’t like Lord Branston. How could that be? The man charmed the very rust off your aunt’s iron will. She thought a good deal of him.”
Lucy shrugged, picking up her fork. “It isn’t that I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
“Whyever not?” Mrs. Wilkins asked, sounding perplexed. “Has he done something wrong?”
“What hasn’t he done wrong?” Lucy replied, thinking of yesterday’s conversation in the street. Though, there hadn’t been anything wrong about that, per se. Her distrust stemmed more from the way he flirted with her in Salisbury, when all along he’d had an ulterior motive. But she couldn’t very well claim the man had kissed her and then stopped himself from taking additional liberties—that would scarcely bolster her argument of untrustworthiness.
Lucy leaned forward, her chin resting on one hand. “It’s just . . . don’t you find it strange? That he’s here, in Lizard Bay? He’s a marquess. He’s supposed to be managing estates and passing bills. Or if not that, gallivanting about London and frequenting gaming hells. Instead, he’s hiding away on the outskirts of a little coastal town.”
“I don’t think he’s hiding, dear. He’s healing. Some family tragedy.”
“Do you mean his sister’s death?” Lucy asked, remembering the conversation on the train. “That was three years ago. Surely he’s past mourning now.”
“I am afraid it goes a bit deeper than that.” Mrs. Wilkins looked around, as though suspicious of lurking gossips, then pulled out a chair and sat down. “When Lord Branston first came to Lizard Bay, he told us all his sister had died. Miss E subscribed to the gossip rags from London, and she read that his sister had died in childbirth, though she was scandalously unwed. But Miss E had her own opinion on the matter. She wondered if his sister might have actually taken her own life.” She shook her head sadly. “Such a terrible misfortune, whichever way it happened. It seems a man might need more than the usual amount of time to recover from something like that.”
Lucy bit her lip, feeling ashamed of her petty remarks. She couldn’t imagine losing one of her siblings in such a terrible way. She remembered what Branston had said on the train about his sister. I lost her. It sounded as though that may have been a euphemism, at best.
“So you might want to go easy on him, hmmm?” Mrs. Wilkins stood up and began to stack the boys’ dirty plates on the sideboard. “Now, before you head out for the day, I thought you might like to take a look in Miss E’s room, look through her things. I’ve a box of curiosities that by rights should belong to you.”
Lucy stood up, eager to step away from the table and the sad knowledge that had just been imparted there. She didn’t want to think of Lord Branston with sympathy, and she suspected he wouldn’t want her to think of him that way either. “Thank you, I would enjoy taking a look.”
“Her room was second to the left on the lower hallway.” Mrs. Wilkins motioned with her chin. “Go on. I’ll come and show you after I’ve put these dishes on to soak.”
Lucy made her way down the hallway, stepping over a pair of cats rolling about the floor. She lifted the latch on the indicated doorway but then stopped, her fingers hesitant. After all, this was the room where her aunt had lived during the last two years of her life.
The room where her aunt had died.
She was learning so much about Aunt E here in Lizard Bay, though it seemed each new layer she uncovered only added to her confusion rather than sharpening her understanding. But she would never sort it out standing in the hallway, so she gathered her courage and stepped inside.
The room echoed with a heavy silence. A patchwork quilt lay across the simple bed, slightly rumpled, as though her aunt had just stepped out for a moment. Dust motes rode small, invisible currents of wind, and they stirred more vigorously as she stepped inside. These things she had expected.
The mess, however, caught her off guard.
There were journals and newspapers stacked floor-to-hip. Hundreds of them, at least two decades worth of accumulated pages. Lucy turned in a circle, taking it all in.
Well. It seemed her aunt may have subscribed to more than just the gossip rags.
Mrs. Wilkins appeared beside her and began clucking her remorse. “Ooooh, it’s dusty in here. I haven’t had time to clean properly since she died, God rest her soul, and she wouldn’t let me clean when she lived here. Said she preferred her privacy.”
“Were these all my aunt’s?” Lucy asked, running a finger across one stack of periodicals.
“Oh yes, she loved to read.” Mrs. Wilkins bent over at the waist, her generous rear waggling. When she came up, she held out a wooden box. “Here you are. It’s not much,” she said as Lucy took it. “Just odds and ends, but I know these were dear to her.” With a sad smile, she turned to go. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Just close the door when you are done. Wouldn’t want the cats to get in here.”
And that was how Lucy came to find herself alone, sitting cross-legged on a dusty floor as she went through the contents of the box. Lifting each piece out, she tried to match the objects to the diary entries she had read. A pressed flower caught her eye—one of Mr. Bentley’s famous roses, no doubt. A bit of frayed rope that made her giggle and clap a hand over her mouth.
And length of red ribbon, faded with age. That one made her frown.
Finally, at the bottom of the box, a cloth-wrapped object caught her eye. A set of fragile glass horses appeared as she carefully peeled away the edges of fabric. She hadn’t properly cried when she’d first learned of Aunt E’s passing, but there was no mistaking the welling of tears in her eyes now. She caught her sob in one hand.
She remembered these horses.
Remembered, too, some stolen, faint memory of her aunt. It was hazy, but she could almost feel her aunt place one of the fragile horses in her hand, cautioning her to be careful but not scolding her, not even when she almost dropped it. She’d forgotten so much of that short, shining visit when she had been six years old . . .
But it was clear, in the keeping of these figurines, her aunt never had. Lucy vowed, then, not to forget. And not to give up either. Aunt E had left her Heathmore for a reason.
And she needed to honor those wishes.
THE AFTERNOON BROUGHT rain clouds and a rising wind out of the east. But the surly weather couldn’t dampen Thomas’s mood. He grinned in anticipation as he tapped the soil off his boots at Mrs. Wilkins’s front door. Friday afternoons were when the town’s more prominent residents gathered in her parlor for a cup of tea and a spot of politics. He enjoyed these meetings, though they’d been less lively since Miss E’s passing.
But the fact that it was Friday afternoon wasn’t the only cause of his high spirits.
Lucy—or, Miss L, as she had insisted he call her—was still in town. The villagers were buzzing with the gossip. She’d spent the day tromping up and down Main Street again, talking to everyone who would listen. But for all her bluster and bravado, he’d heard from old Jamieson that she had still not coerced anyone into showing her the way to Heathmore Cottage.
Not that he was surprised by her lack of success. The town was now quite terrified of the place—a fact he’d discovered when he tried to get the roofer to finish the roof this m
orning. Apparently, Miss Westmore’s remarkably similar appearance to a younger Miss E had only stirred the gossip-prone bunch on to higher superstition, and no one was willing to return to finish the job. But despite his lack of success on that front, it was a step he was determined to complete, even if he had to go to Marston to hire workers, and even if he ended up losing the property in the end. After all, it was his fault the cottage was missing a roof, because he’d prematurely removed the old, moldy thatching in the first place.
She shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of his mistake.
Still, she was going to be in a foul mood, one he suspected might even make the hellish coach ride he’d endured two days ago seem like a Sunday stroll. A better man would let her enjoy her tea and her sulk in peace. But Friday afternoon tea at Mrs. Wilkins’s house was one of the few social pleasures to be had in Lizard Bay.
He’d be damned if he let an ill-tempered spinster chase him away from his town.
And if his feet were moving forward now out of a desire to see her, well now, that was just something he would be sure to keep to himself.
He stepped inside, shaking the first patter of raindrops from his hair, and made his way into the parlor. Had the room always seemed so small? Or was it just that she filled it so completely? It hardly mattered that the room also contained Reverend Wellsbury, Mr. Jamieson, and the postmaster, Mr. Bentley. All he could see was her.
Her gold walking gown bore the brunt of four days of wrinkles, and her short blond hair was a wild halo about her cheeks. But the evidence of her dishabille wasn’t what made the grin on his lips stretch wider. She was standing in one corner talking to Mr. Bentley and holding a calico cat. She looked as though she belonged here.
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