“But where can we go?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something.”
“Do you have any money?”
“No, but I mean to have an allowance.”
But when Sara went to see the solicitor two days later, she found her fortune was no more accessible to her than to a total stranger.
“No provision was made for settling an income on you,” the solicitor stated in a flat, noncommittal voice. “It was determined that you would live with the Earl and that your support should come from his personal funds.”
“But I don’t want to be dependent on the Earl.”
The young solicitor was extremely uncomfortable. He was of the opinion that all women, and especially those possessed of great fortunes, should leave the handling of their money to their husbands or fathers.
“I can see there’s nothing more to be gained here,” said Sara, rising.
But she was at a stand. It was useless to approach the Earl, he rarely spoke to her now, and he was seldom at home. Olivia Tate was leaving the house tomorrow. The Countess’s Scottish servants were going back home, and the others would soon be forced to seek new situations.
“I need a new situation myself,” Sara mumbled to herself over the noise of the carriage. Betty met her at the door. “They won’t give me a penny,” she reported, and cast her wool cloak from her in disgust.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, but I will not stay here,” Sara observed tartly.
“But we can go nowhere without money.”
“We shall have it, and the Earl will provide it.”
“Milady, you know the Earl will never give you a shilling, much less a pound.”
“I don’t plan to ask him.”
“But how—?” Betty’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t!”
“Why not? It’s my money.”
“But that’s stealing. “
“He can take it out of my income.” Sara leveled her determined gaze at Betty. “His strongbox must be in his bedroom. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get in, if we wait until everybody’s gone.”
“I always did want to see inside one of them great money boxes,” Betty said, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “I’ve never seen more than a few pounds at one time.”
“I imagine this box will have more money than you ever dreamed of, but we’ll have a better chance to escape detection, if we only take a little.”
Next morning they waited until after the bustle over Olivia Tate’s departure had died down. The Earl left the house on some private business, and the servants were mostly getting themselves ready to leave. It was an easy matter for Sara and Betty to get inside the Earl’s bedroom unseen.
“Jesu!” exclaimed Betty, who was the more nervous of the two. “You act like you break into rooms every day, and I’m shaking like a newborn lamb.”
“What can he say that he hasn’t said already?” was Sara’s prosaic reply.
The chest was not hidden. It sat at the end of the Earl’s bed, an impressive trunk made by one of the firms in Nuremburg and elaborately decorated and bound with bands of iron. A great double lock insured that its contents would not be disturbed without the benefit of the keys that the Earl or his steward kept with them at all times.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” breathed Betty.
“I don’t give a fig what it looks like. I just want it open. The Earl must keep a key here somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” said Betty, inspecting the great double lock that protected the contents of the box. “I wouldn’t leave the key lying about if it was mine.”
“Let’s start looking,” hissed Sara. “I don’t know how long the Earl will be gone.”
“You’d better leave me to do it,” advised Betty. “The way you leave a drawer, even a blind man could tell it had been gone through.”
So Betty set to work systematically, going through every drawer and cupboard in the room, while Sara nervously guarded the door.
“Hurry up,” she hissed. “What’s taking so long?”
“I can’t find the key,” Betty hissed back. She turned over piles of clothes as rapidly as she could, but each passing minute wore at Sara’s composure like dripping water on a sugar crystal. It wasn’t long before she was dancing like a puppet on a string.
“It’s his valet,” Sara whispered urgently, when she saw the dour countenance of Skelton approaching down the hall.
“You can’t hide there,” Betty remonstrated, when Sara headed for the closet. “He’s bound to have business with the Earl’s clothes. Hide in the window alcove!”
Sara dashed behind the heavy curtains, hoping they hung low enough to hide her shoes. She had barely stilled their movement when the door opened.
She was unable to see the valet, but she could see the Earl’s bed, and her heart nearly stopped. Betty had dived under the bed, but her feet were sticking out. Sara almost gave herself up for lost, but she heard Skelton go into one of the clothes cupboards and she hissed imperatively. Betty’s feet remained visible, and Sara hissed again, too loudly this time, and Skelton came hurrying from the cupboard. For a moment she heard and saw nothing, even though she could have sworn she heard Skelton open the door, and then in a space between the two curtains, she saw him stealthily approaching the alcove, a broom raised above his head. Sara’s body became rigid and she stopped breathing. Hurriedly she tried to think how she would explain her presence in the Earl’s bedchamber. In almost the same instant, Skelton brought the broom down with a loud whack. His triumphant “Aha!” and the sudden onslaught of feline hissing and spitting covered Sara’s muffled scream.
“And stay in the kitchen where you belong,” Skelton called loudly, as he closed the door and returned to the cupboard. “I hope the cook takes that dratted cat off with her,” he muttered grumpily.
When Sara was finally able to breath again, she saw that Betty’s feet had disappeared. She let her breath go in a long, slow stream. If she ever got out of here without the Earl finding her, she’d starve to death before she tried to steal from him again, even if it was her own money.
Unable to see a thing from her position, it seemed to Sara that Skelton spent an unaccountably long time walking back and forth about the room, first to one closet and then to another cupboard. What can he possibly be doing, Sara demanded of herself, only to realize that he was packing. She tensed. That could keep her here for hours, and such a prolonged stay would undoubtedly lead to discovery by the Earl. Her palms began to sweat. Much of the time Skelton’s tread was virtually inaudible from her hiding place, the heavy velvet muffling all sound except the opening and closing of the doors. She didn’t know how long she had remained hidden when Betty suddenly pulled back the curtain.
“You scared me half to death,” gasped Sara, looking around nervously. “I suppose we’ll have to forget the money,” she said, not entirely sorry to be leaving the apartment.
“Not on your life,” said Betty cheerfully. “The last thing Skelton did was open the chest. See?” To demonstrate, she raised the heavy lid. Her eyes widened and her breathing stopped at the sight that met her eyes. The chest was nearly full of gold coins.
“I never knew there was so much money in the world,” gasped Betty.
“How much do you think is here?” asked Sara, who had no experience of money except in small amounts.
“I don’t know, but it must be thousands. How much should we take?”
“How about fifty pounds? Even that’s bound to make an impression, and we don’t want the Earl to know it’s missing.”
“I don’t know,” Betty said, wavering. “I’m sure the Earl would know if as much as a shilling was gone.”
“No, he won’t. Both he and his steward have keys to this box. Each will assume it was taken by the other. We can remove any reasonable sum without the slightest fear of detection.”
They spent some minutes longer trying to arrive at a practical sum, and in the end s
ettled on the fifty pounds Sara mentioned first. Having extracted that sum, they hurried away to their apartment. They breathed a deep sigh of relief once they had closed the door behind them.
“My agent in Scotland informs me that Gavin has arrived at Estameer,” the Earl announced to Sara across the breakfast table the next morning.
Sara had made a deliberate attempt to avoid meeting her father-in-law since their last interview, but this morning she had come down to the breakfast parlor fully an hour before her usual time. She had done some more thinking, and she had a proposition to put to him.
“It appears your husband has wasted no time in providing himself with a mistress.” The Earl lowered his letter and looked at Sara with a smile full of mockery. “Your charms seem to have made no lasting impression on him.”
Up until now Sara had endured the Earl’s numerous barbs in stoic silence, because fighting back only encouraged him to attack even more maliciously, but she would endure it no longer.
“I don’t imagine he was looking forward to the winter without someone to warm his bed,” she replied, trying to keep the hurt and chagrin from her voice.
“Madam, you speak very lightly of a serious matter,” the Earl shot back.
“Am I to infer that you disapprove of the practice of keeping a mistress?” inquired Sara, determined not to back down.
“That is not the issue at all. You are his wife.”
“Does that automatically make me deaf, dumb, and blind, or am I just supposed to act stupid?”
“You’re supposed to be above such matters. Your purpose is to provide your husband with an heir, and that’s impossible for you to accomplish with Gavin four hundred miles away.”
“I can wait until he returns.”
“If he returns,” muttered the Earl, mostly to himself. For a moment, his gaze seemed to travel faraway, and Sara thought he was going to sink into an abstraction, but he roused himself and turned back to her.
“I shall join the Duke in two days.” He didn’t even pause to allow Sara to answer him. “I’ve made arrangements for you to have one hundred pounds for your personal needs, paid to you quarterly. However, my steward will remain in control of the house. Do not attempt to alter my arrangements. He has been instructed to ignore any requests to do so.”
“I will not stay locked up in this great house with only the caretaker for company,” Sara declared wrathfully.
“Suit yourself, though I doubt a hundred pounds will run to the lease of a house and hiring of servants.” He rose to go. “Don’t put my steward to a lot of unnecessary trouble. I would dislike it.”
“Don’t you care what I dislike?” Sara demanded. She didn’t know why she continued to be surprised at his attitude.
“No,” the Earl said, pausing on his way out. “I am only interested in you as a means of providing the family with an heir.”
“And if I should succeed?” demanded Sara, coming at last to the reason she had wanted to see the Earl.
His cold eyes moved over her with contempt. “Then I suppose I should be forced to reorder my opinion of you.
“That’s not enough. If you want an heir badly enough to force Gavin into marriage against his will, you ought to be willing to give up something important for it.”
“Such as?”
“Control of my own fortune.” The Earl regarded her more soberly for some time.
“And if I refuse?”
“Why should you? You can’t hold on to my money forever, and even if you could, it won’t give you an heir. Also, if you don’t make more suitable provisions for me, I shall bring you into court, and that would create a scandal you won’t like.”
“You won’t succeed.”
“But then, neither will you.” The two protagonists faced each other, each trying to measure the other, each trying to fathom the other’s strength. Sara’s knees shook and her whole body felt weak with uncertainty, but her eyes did not fall.
“I can’t give you control of your principal. Your father’s will leaves it to your husband.”
“But Gavin can turn it over to me.”
“What makes you think he would?”
“He would if you asked him. He doesn’t care about my money.”
“Why do you think Gavin would do anything I wanted?”
“You forced him to marry me.”
“Ah, but that was for his mother. I doubt I could persuade him to walk across the street to save my neck.”
“You’ll find some way,” Sara insisted.
“I think I just might,” said the Earl thoughtfully, intrigued by Sara’s proposal. “I have the power to interfere with the property his mother left him. I think he would agree to almost anything, if I were to relinquish that right.”
“Then you will give me my money if I succeed?” demanded Sara. The Earl studied her for a moment, and then brusquely prepared to take his departure.
“I don’t suppose you will be able to do anything more than become a thorn in his side, but if you should succeed, I will transfer control of your principal and income to you. It will be worth anything to keep that bastard Hawley from stepping into my shoes.”
“Put that in writing,” Sara said, and produced a piece of writing paper from her pocket. The Earl regarded her with surprise, and then actually smiled.
“Certainly.” He took up the paper, searched for and found pen and ink, and sat down to write. “I, Oliver Carlisle, Earl of Parkhaven, do agree to hand over to Lady Sara Carlisle control of her inheritance and its income on the day she becomes the mother of a healthy male heir to the Parkhaven title and estates. It is a further condition that she must be living under the same roof as her husband and be in good charity with him.” The Earl read over his words, waved the paper in the air to dry the ink, and then handed it to Sara after signing and dating it.
“There’s your agreement,” he said standing. “Now please don’t inflict yourself upon me, until you’ve fulfilled its conditions.”
But for once his words had no power to hurt Sara. She had the promise she wanted, and the taste of success was sweet.
Chapter 10
Having cleared the first step, Sara was free to concentrate on Gavin, but she hardly knew how to begin. For years she had imagined him to be a slim boy with a merry laugh and dancing eyes, only to learn that he had grown into a tall man with a powerful body and an unforgettably handsome face. Yet before she could begin to assimilate the change, she found herself married to a morose and wrathful young man who had forced himself upon her in a drunken stupor, and kept a mistress besides.
Then, while she was still reeling from the shock of the Countess’s death, she discovered he was haunted by the death of a mother he loved deeply, and the fear he might turn out to be like the father he despised. He was more tortured and unhappy than she had ever been.
But though her mind might not know what to think, her heart felt no indecision. Learning that Gavin suffered and bled like all other mortals somehow made him seem more real, more human, and that had the unforeseen effect of virtually wiping out the nightmare of her wedding night. Her stubbornly romantic heart gathered up all the sympathetic impressions and merged them into a portrait of a man who would someday welcome her into his arms with a kiss and a laugh, and make her feel warm and secure for the rest of her life.
She had no basis for this feeling, neither Gavin nor his father had given her reason to discount the ugliness she saw, but she was convinced that if she could only get past the barriers erected by anger, pain, and fear, her picture of Gavin would be the right one.
It hadn’t taken Sara long to become jealous of the deep and unshakable love Gavin had for his mother. She longed to be the object of such fierce adoration. She chastised herself for being covetous of a son’s love for his mother, but she was envious of it nonetheless. She was certain she could have lived the rest of her life in joyous contentment on just a tithe of the love, gentleness, sensitivity, and consideration he lavished on the Gountess.
&
nbsp; Almost as significant was Gavin’s violent condemnation of his father. It must have taken great courage to oppose the Earl so openly. Not only did he risk being disinherited, he risked being cut off from the only society of which he could ever be a part. No, it didn’t matter what the Earl said or what Gavin did, Sara was convinced that somewhere inside Gavin was the boy she remembered and the man who could love so generously, hate so intensely, and suffer so deeply.
It was a relief to have her mind made up at last. In the days immediately following their wedding, she had hidden in her bedchamber, horrified by the kind of man she had married, afraid he would come back, afraid he wouldn’t, afraid of facing the Earl’s anger, afraid of going back to Miss Adelaide. She had been helplessly caught between a past she didn’t want and future that didn’t want her, but the Countess’s death had disclosed the pain and fear that knotted and confined Gavin’s heart. Sara all but forgot her own misery in the face of his torment. Maybe he never would be the hero of her dreams, maybe he never would love her as much as she loved him, but there was a fine, honest, warm, and caring man hidden somewhere inside Gavin Carlisle, and she was determined to find him.
“We ought to go back to Miss Adelaide’s,” groaned Betty. “You have no business living in this great house alone.”
“I will never go back,” said Sara, her teeth clenched tight with determination. “We are going to Scotland and find my husband.”
“B-but we can’t,” stammered Betty. “That must be hundreds of miles away!”
“If he can travel that far, so can we.”
“He may not take you in.
“I’m his wife. He has to.”
“We don’t even know where he is.”
“I can always ask the solicitor,” Sara said, undaunted. “I have to see him about getting my money early.”
But the solicitor would not agree to pay Sara any of the hundred pounds until the first of the year. Once again her proud spirit got her back up, and she marched back to Parkhaven House, a defiant look on her face.
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