The Virgin Who Vindicated Lord Darlington

by Anna Bradley

  Dear God, it was maddening. Cecilia caught her tongue between her teeth to keep herself from shouting at them to speak up.

  “…unstable, Haslemere. Miss Honeywell’s story…go after her.”

  Unstable? Cecilia’s hands curled in an agony of frustration. Go after who?

  They were just far enough away she could only catch a word here and there, but she’d caught enough of it to know one thing for certain.

  Something was terribly amiss at Darlington Castle.

  The two conversed for another minute or so, but aside from a stray word here or there she couldn’t make sense of, none of what they said reached Cecilia’s ears until Lord Darlington said, “We need to search the grounds.”

  Cecilia stared at Lord Haslemere’s back as he hurried down the corridor toward his own rooms, then she ducked back into her bedchamber and slid her door closed. Lord Darlington’s footsteps echoed down the hallway, passed her room, and then she heard him moving about in his bedchamber.

  She crept toward the connecting door. She didn’t dare open it even a crack, but she could hear rustling on the other side, then the thud of boots across the floor. His bedchamber door creaked open, footsteps strode down the hallway, and then…

  Silence.

  Cecilia took a stumbling step back from the door, her thoughts in turmoil.

  She, they’d said. She, over and over again, but the only “she” Cecilia knew of who was in any way involved in this mystery was…

  The Marchioness of Darlington.

  The dead Marchioness of Darlington.

  Was this a mystery, a ghost story, or a nightmare? Cecilia no longer knew, and there was only one way to find out the truth.

  Follow Lord Darlington and Lord Haslemere. Not tonight—she couldn’t leave Isabella alone—but she’d seize her chance when it presented itself. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the night after.

  Until then…

  She glanced over her shoulder at Isabella, who was still curled up on her side, fast asleep in her bed. Cecilia started toward her, but she paused when her gaze fell on the connecting door between her room and Lady Darlington’s forbidden bedchamber.

  Her heart took up a dizzying, pounding rhythm inside her chest. She pressed her palms flat against the wall at her back, as if that one small act of retreat might be enough to keep her from moving toward Lady Darlington’s door.

  What did she think she’d find on the other side of it?

  Some mystery Lord Darlington was hiding? Some lie he’d told? A White Lady, or a missing marchioness? A pile of bones secreted away inside the stone walls, or Lady Cassandra, alive and well and tucked under her coverlet as if she’d been there all this time, simply waiting for someone to discover she wasn’t dead, after all?

  It was madness. Utter madness, and yet…

  Even as everything inside her rebelled at it, Cecilia’s feet were moving across the floor, every step taking her closer to the bedchamber she hadn’t entered since the night Lord Darlington had caught her there.

  She’d promised never to enter it again, but it seemed she was every bit the liar he’d accused her of being, because despite that promise she grasped the latch, the cold iron burning an imprint into her hand, and then she was turning it, and pushing the door open, and it was too late to pray it would be locked as it was meant to be, and too late to change her mind, and keep her promise.

  She’d already broken it.

  Without knowing what she was searching for, without knowing whether she hoped or dreaded she’d find it, she crept forward until she passed over the threshold and into Lady Darlington’s bedchamber.

  She paused at the door, pulling her shawl tighter around her against the sudden cold, and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, her breath left her lungs in a painful whoosh.

  Nothing had been touched. There wasn’t a single item out of place.

  It looked precisely as it had the last time she’d been in here. The drapes were pulled across the windows, the silk bed hangings arranged against the posts, the coverlet undisturbed by a single wrinkle, and the dressing table with a few jeweled hairpins scattered across the polished surface—

  Hairpins? Had those been here the last time? Cecilia didn’t remember there being anything on the dressing table.

  She crossed the room, plucked up one of the pins and turned it between her fingers. They were a delicate, silver filigree with tiny, winking sapphires at the end. No, she didn’t remember these, but she might have overlooked them. The room had been dark, and she’d been distracted by Seraphina at the time.

  Seraphina, and then shortly after that, Lord Darlington.

  She set the pin down on the dressing table where she’d found it, but as she turned back toward the door, the tip of her bare toe nudged up against something. At first, she thought it was the chair leg, but when she leaned down and peeked under the dressing table she saw a pair of richly embroidered blue satin slippers there, lined up neatly side by side, as if their owner would return at any moment and slip her feet into them.

  Their owner being Lady Darlington. The late Lady Darlington.

  Cecilia snatched her foot back, a sudden chill creeping up her neck as she turned to the dressing room on the other side of the bedchamber. She bit her lip, hesitating. There was no logical explanation why it should be so, but some inexplicable instinct was luring her toward that dressing room, urging her to explore the massive clothes press inside.

  This is madness.

  No good ever came from poking about in other people’s closets, but even as her brain warned against it, Cecilia was already crossing the room, easing the door of the clothes press open, and peeking inside. It was dark, but a flutter of something caught her attention. It looked like…a fold of silk or satin, very much like the skirt of a gown. “No. It’s impossible.” She reached out a shaking hand, her heart pounding. “It can’t be, it can’t—”

  She broke off on a gasp as her fingertips met a fold of smooth, slippery silk.

  No. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she was seeing.

  But she was. It was there, as plain as day.

  An elegant blue silk ball gown was hanging on its own special hanging rack inside the clothes press. Cecilia stared at it with her feet rooted to the floor. A blue silk ball gown, embroidered slippers, and jeweled hairpins, all appearing in the marchioness’s bedchamber as if by magic?

  She didn’t remember any of these things being here before, but mightn’t she have missed them the first time? The hairpins were easily overlooked, and the shadows under the dressing table would have made it impossible to see the slippers from the door.

  But a blue silk ball gown? Surely, she would have noticed that the first time she’d ventured into Lady Darlington’s bedchamber? It seemed too substantial a thing for her to have missed.

  Cecilia’s mind raced back to that night. She’d heard the strange scratching sound, and found the bedchamber unlocked. She’d followed the sound into the dressing room, and from there to the clothes press. She’d eased the door open, and…

  Seraphina had leapt out, frightening the life of out of her, and Cecilia had chased the cat into the bedchamber, without sparing the clothes press another thought. No, she’d never taken a good look inside. She couldn’t be certain the gown hadn’t been there all along.

  Of course, it must have been. It was the only thing that made any sense. The only other explanation—that someone had brought the hairpins and the shoes and the gown into Lady Darlington’s bedchamber since the last time Cecilia had been here—made no sense at all.

  Unless…

  Cecilia swallowed. Perhaps the villagers had been right about one thing—that the Marchioness of Darlington was back—but they’d been wrong about another.

  Perhaps she wasn’t a ghost.

  Cecilia didn’t believe in ghosts, or she hadn’t
, but there were only two explanations for the events of tonight, both of them appalling.

  It was either one nightmare, or the other.

  Either ghosts truly did exist, and the White Lady was haunting Darlington Castle, just as the villagers claimed she was, or…

  Or Lady Darlington wasn’t dead, after all.

  * * * *

  She was here.

  Gideon couldn’t see her face, and he couldn’t hear her voice or the echo of her footsteps. He didn’t catch her scent floating on the frigid night air, but sight, sound, and scent were no longer of any use to him, now he was chasing a ghost.

  Not that they’d ever been much use to him, really. A man’s senses could deceive him, with tragic results. If he’d learned nothing else this past year, it was that.

  So, he suspended them all in favor of instinct, intuition, reflex. He knew she was here because he could sense her nearness, feel her lurking in the darkness of the woods, darting between the bare branches of the trees, waiting. He could feel her cold, ghostly fingertips grazing the back of his neck, leaving a chill in their wake.

  “You have servants guarding the castle?” Haslemere’s voice was grim.

  “Yes. Fraser on the ground floor, Duncan on the second.” Both were young, strong Scotsmen, gentle but fiercely protective of the inhabitants of Darlington Castle. No one, whether ghost or human, would get by either of them without a battle.

  Haslemere nodded. “Good. Mrs. Briggs saw the lantern light near the tree line?”

  “Past the rose walk, on the south edge of the property.” The villagers’ rumors about the ghost echoed in Gideon’s head as he and Haslemere made their way across the frozen ground.

  White gown, white hair, face a deathly white…

  He’d never imagined for an instant the rumors could be true. He should have known, should have seen it—

  “You couldn’t have known, Darlington,” Haslemere said, as if he’d read Gideon’s mind. “Christ, no one could have predicted she’d come back.”

  “It’s been months, Haslemere.” Gideon knew he should hate her for it, but underneath the anger, the confusion, all he felt was a cold, distant kind of pity. “Why now?”

  “I’ve thought about that.” Haslemere’s voice was quiet in the darkness, and Gideon glanced at him as they came around the side of the castle. A muted light shone through the kitchen window, illuminating his friend’s unsmiling mouth, his clenched jaw. “There can only be one reason. Your marriage, Darlington. She came to stop it. Nothing else makes sense.”

  Gideon’s steps slowed. “But why? She got what she wanted. Why risk it all to return here now?”

  Haslemere shook his head. “To punish you? I don’t pretend to understand her reasons. I doubt even she understands them. She’s not rational, and that makes her dangerous.”

  Gideon thought of Isabella, and a shudder rolled over him. If all she wanted was to punish him, he’d consider himself lucky. A broken betrothal and another scandal were nothing, nothing compared to what might have happened. “She’s accomplished her goal, then. I’m no longer betrothed.”

  “Are you sorry for it?”

  Gideon glanced at Haslemere. “You’re asking if I’m devastated to lose my bride?”

  “Yes.” Haslemere’s voice was guarded. “Are you?”

  Was he? Gideon drew in a sharp breath, let the cold air burn his lungs. The horror on Miss Honeywell’s face, the ugliness in her voice…

  You’re a wicked, wicked man.

  She truly believed he was a murderer. Perhaps she’d thought so all along.

  He’d asked her to marry him. In another four days he would have made her his wife, yet he couldn’t muster a trace of regret on her account. By the time a few weeks passed, he wondered if he’d even recall the color of her eyes, the contours of her face. His emotions were a tangled mess, but at least he could reassure Haslemere on this account. “No, I’m not sorry. It’s for the best.”

  Given time, he’d likely be grateful for it.

  The lines of tension around Haslemere’s mouth eased, and he let out a short laugh. “You’re free of her mother, at any rate. Near escape, really.”

  Yes, he was free of his bride, and free of Mrs. Honeywell, but he wasn’t free, because another face had taken the place of Miss Honeywell’s, another pair of eyes, dark and bottomless, another voice…

  Low and sweet, singing.

  But he wouldn’t think of that now. They were closing in on the tree line. If anyone was wandering in the woods with a lantern, they’d be able to see the light by now. Gideon squinted into the gloom, but not a glimmer brightened the darkness.

  He and Haslemere tramped through the woods for some time, bare tree branches tearing at their coats, frigid fingers of wind creeping under their collars, but there were no poachers or pranksters hidden among the trees, no White Lady with a face as pale as death, her white gown trailing along the forest floor.

  There was no one.

  By the time they turned back toward the castle, their feet and hands were half-frozen, and Gideon’s hopes had faded. “Tomorrow, we search again. We’ve got to find her, Haslemere, before—”

  “We’ll find her. I promise you that, Darlington.”

  They didn’t speak again as they made their way back to the castle.

  In another few hours, the sun would rise. There didn’t seem to be much point in retiring now. Gideon knew he wouldn’t sleep, but he wasn’t sure what else to do, so when he reached his bedchamber, he stripped off his coat, lay down on his bed, and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Despite Mrs. Honeywell’s frantic promises the night before, Miss Honeywell had not come to her senses by the following morning. The two of them descended the stairs dressed in their traveling cloaks before breakfast, Mrs. Honeywell red-faced and breathless, and her daughter pale and determined.

  Gideon had been informed of their imminent departure and had dragged a reluctant Haslemere with him into the entrance hall to bid them goodbye.

  “My lord.” Miss Honeywell swept down the stairs with all the dignity a lady who’d spent the previous night shrieking like a banshee could possibly muster. “I regret our betrothal has come to such a sad pass.”

  Gideon, who’d spend a good part of the night wondering why he didn’t feel even a twinge of regret at the loss of his betrothed, offered her a polite bow. “I’m truly sorry for—”

  “Lord Darlington.” Mrs. Honeywell grasped Gideon’s arm before he could say another word. “Do talk some sense into the girl, won’t you?”

  “Miss Honeywell appears to have made up her mind, madam.” Gideon frowned down at the stout fingers twisting his coat sleeve. “I don’t know what you’d have me say.”

  “Why, that you didn’t murder your wife, of course, and thus there’s no reason for her to haunt Darlington Castle. I’m certain the late Marchioness of Darlington has more sense than to haunt a perfectly innocent gentleman like yourself. It’s all a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “I beg your pardon, madam, but I believe your daughter has made herself quite clear on that matter.” Haslemere, who’d had more than enough of Mrs. Honeywell, spoke through clenched teeth. “She believes Lord Darlington to be a murderer. Given the circumstances, I can’t think why he’d wish to marry her, even if she did change her mind.”

  Miss Honeywell glared at Haslemere, then drew herself up stiffly. “Indeed, Mama, you waste your breath.”

  Mrs. Honeywell looked between the three stony faces, and threw her hands up in the air. “You’re a great fool, Fanny, and you’ll be made to realize it soon enough when we return to London, and no one who matters will deign to speak to you. But as you say, I’ve wasted enough breath on you, and shan’t say another word on the matter.”

  With that, Mrs. Honeywell swept out the front entrance in a dramatic swirl of skirts, marched a
cross the drive, and with her coachman’s assistance, heaved herself into the carriage. Fanny followed after her mother without a backward glance. Gideon and Haslemere trailed after them and watched as the coach rounded the curve at the end of the drive and vanished from sight.

  “I’d wager my pair of matched bays Mrs. Honeywell will find she has a great deal more to say on this matter, after all.” Haslemere turned to Gideon. “What say you, Darlington?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Only that I’m glad I’m not Miss Honeywell. Unless she marries a duke, her mother will be berating her for losing a marquess until she’s old and gray. Better to marry a murderous marquess than die a spinster.”

  Haslemere snorted. “I can’t say I’m sorry to see them go. Miss Honeywell seems a tolerable enough young lady, but she’s rather dim, and God knows my most terrifying nightmare pales in comparison to her mother.”

  Gideon ran a hand over his jaw, thinking. “We have one fewer thing to worry about now they’re gone, but we both know Miss Honeywell didn’t imagine that ghost lingering outside her window last night.”

  “That business with the moaning and pointing is more difficult to credit, especially given Miss Honeywell’s hysterical state when we reached her bedchamber. She might have imagined it.”

  “No.” Gideon blew out a breath. “I don’t think she did. It’s obvious why our White Lady would want to chase off Miss Honeywell.”

  “Well, she’s gone now. Perhaps that will be the end of it.”

  Haslemere was doing his best to sound hopeful, but he wasn’t any more persuaded by this argument than Gideon was. Miss Honeywell’s departure wouldn’t be the end of this. They both knew it, and Gideon couldn’t allow any of his household to be put at risk. “We can’t take that chance, Haslemere. Darlington Castle has seen too much tragedy as it is. It ends here.”

  “Indeed. Well, then, we’ll simply have to find your ghost, won’t we?”

  Gideon glanced up into the pale gray sky. The few rays of feeble sunlight that pierced the thick cloud cover hanging over the castle turned everything a strange, eerie white. Light snowflakes drifted down, the icy pinpricks hitting Gideon’s upturned face.