Maid of Honor

by Stephanie Lilley

  Maid of Honor

  by

  Stephanie Lilley

  Copyright©2010 by Stephanie Gay Lilley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Stephanie Lilley.

  Cover art by Jennifer Detweiler.

  Chapter One

  It was a fine misty morning in Kent that saw three friends on the road to London. Their carriage traveled at a jaunty pace along the river Medway, followed by a luggage-laden fourgon. Two of the trio lazily watched the passing scenery while the third snored rather enthusiastically, oblivious to his surroundings. Seven hours would see them at their destination; eight hours would see them at White's settling in for a long night of play. But such complacency simply begged to be overset, and, in this particular instance, a brassy arpeggio announced the interruption.

  “That sound!” Buck Rasherly observed.

  “Rather like a yard-of-tin orchestra,” commented Peter Everhurst, Viscount Cerestone, with a small smile.

  “The fox!” cried Henry Parkington, coming awake. He glanced confusedly about the carriage. Then, seeing he was not on the hunting fields, he fell back against the velvet squabs and began to snore loudly once more.

  “And there it is again. How odd,” said Buck. “Horns of some sort.” He lifted his quizzing glass and focused a magnified gray eye on Parkington. “Although one can hardly hear it over the noise in this carriage.”

  Cerestone laughed, amusement softening what was rather severe face in repose. His green eyes twinkled. “We should be able to see something once we climb above the river.”

  “Ah, this wretched mist,” Buck lamented. Indeed, the mist presented an appalling threat to his carefully arranged dark locks.

  “You mean this wretched morning.”

  “That too, dear boy. What folly to play at cards the entire night when we might have been sleeping.”

  “Rather, what folly to sleep when we might have been at cards,” Cerestone corrected. As he lifted a dark brow, Buck nodded.

  “Quite so.” He turned stiffly to the carriage window, admirably avoiding the shirt points that threatened his eyes. “Why, Cerestone, I do believe we are climbing.”

  “It is inevitable in the Downs.” Cerestone opened the guidebook that had been lying idle in his hands. He leafed through it, searching for the section on the Medway Valley. Already this morning he had forced his friends to pause in Aylesford so that they might admire the numerous red-tiled roofs, the lovely old church above High Street surrounded by elms just beginning to put forth their reddish flower clusters, and the friary built of mellow-golden ragstone, once inhabited by Carmelite monks.

  Admittedly, both Buck and Henry has been less than enthralled with his historical obsession but surprised Cerestone and themselves by waxing enthusiastic about the next stop: a prehistoric tomb called Kits Coty House. This site presented the opportunity for a wager. Everyone knew that witches had built the thing, but who was inside? After a half hour of speculation, Cerestone had had to drag his friends away.

  “Surely there is nothing left to see in this valley,” Buck protested, looking askance.

  “There might be,” the viscount answered hopefully, holding the pages up to the light. “Why, look here!”

  Buck moaned softly.

  “Castle ruins! Real ones, not Gothic follies. We are quite near them in fact.”

  The moan rose in volume.

  “Grassmere, built 1374 to enable Edward III to control river traffic—”

  “It excites me,” Buck ended with a sigh.

  “As well it should,” the viscount told him with a chuckle, closing the guidebook. “However, I shall not subject you to further historical torture as the ruins are on the east bank and we are on the west.”

  “A reprieve, by Jove!”

  “Take note, my friend, that it is only because I intend to arrive in London and open the house before my stepmother arrives. She does like her comfort.” He put the guidebook away in his leather satchel, squeezing it in among papers, pens, inkwells, and other books.

  “I remember all too well, dear boy. We were three ‘horrid little boys’ when we disturbed her peace at Woodhurst.”

  No, Cerestone thought ruefully, the dowager Lady Cerestone had never appreciated him and his two fellow Harrovians playing banshee about the house during their holidays. It had invariably led to a nervous attack on the part of his stepmama, which led to either a stern word from the old viscount, or, if the behavior was truly outrageous, The Strap.

  “And how is your stepsister Georgy?” Buck asked, pursing his lips. “I recall she was quite an avid follower—but cried when her dresses got muddy.”

  “She is grown up—you wouldn’t know her—and impatient to be fired off,” Cerestone told him.

  “And, it seems,” Buck said, his gray, myopic eyes looking amused, “Lady Cerestone plans to fire you off.”

  The viscount groaned. Since the death of her husband five years earlier, Lady Cerestone had secluded herself at Woodhurst, but lately had announced her wish to return to an active life in town. She intended to join the London season already underway, to launch her older daughter, and to find her stepson a bride—a fashionable young lady who would be adept at running a household and who would have the proper understanding and compassion for a mother-in-law’s sensibilities.

  That was when he had thought of his school chums. He wrote to them, begging that they remember the pact made at Harrow: that the three of them would support each other through the nasty vicissitudes of life, which included, at the time, some bullying upperclassmen. Now he would need their aid in thwarting the dowager’s plans; he hoped at the same time that they might indulge in some play of their own. Then Cerestone wished nothing more than to return to Woodhurst unwed and continue with his research and writing. There was time later to think of marrying—he was only thirty, after all!

  But only yesterday, while visiting Henry at this estate south of Maidstone, Cerestone’s valet-fellow bibliophile, Tench, had said, “If I knows the mistress, my lord, you’ll come home neatly wrapped and done to a turn. You’ll be jumpin’ the broom before summer.”

  “You are wrong,” the viscount told him, then added desperately, “There will be three of us.”

  Tench tapped one of the Gothic romances he carried in his coat pocket and nodded wisely.

  “Three won’t do. A hundred won’t do. I’ve read about this time and again.”

  “Life is not a Gothic romance, Tench—more like a picaresque novel if one is not careful.”

  “And you intend to write your own fate, my lord? I’ll bet my fine Caracalla wig on your losing.”

  Tench’s guffaw still echoed in Cerestone’s mind as he told Buck, “Between you and my own determination, I will survive the Season unshackled.”

  “We will be a bulwark against all aspiring mamas. First, however, we must see to Henry.” Buck turned his quizzing glass on the sleeping bud across fro them. “He dresses like a country squire.”

  “He is a country squire.”

  “But one need not advertise the fact. One never wears a suit of a single color. The coat, waistcoat, and nether integuments must be of differing colors and differing materials.”

  Henry indeed wore all brown worsted—a suit of dittos. With a lock of straight brown hair falling across his forehead, his long chin, and brown suit, he looked quite like one of his chestnut horses. His snores even ended
on a whinny once in a while.

  All this made Crestone very self-conscious, more so when Buck turned the quizzing glass on him. He tugged at the sleeve of his coat, parsley green corduroy with shiny elbows. He wore comfortable breeches, softened, old top boots, and a less than pristine shirt. Buck had always had the knack of looking at ease in the tight, fashionable clothes, but Peter had chosen comfort and Henry had never cared. Among the beau monde Buck had already earned the nickname “The Walking Stick” due to his high sense of de rigueur and slender proportions.

  The quizzing glass continued to stare. “You have been too long in the country, dear boy; however I shall exert myself to see you both brought up to the mark.”

  “I think I appreciate your concern.”

  “You shall,” Buck assured him. “You would not wish to embarrass Georgy.”

  Peter laughed a little. “To Georgy I am a raw bookworm who can only turn into a moth—never a socially acceptable butterfly.”

  “Young ladies just coming on the town wish all aspects to be perfect,” Buck said knowledgeably. “They are forever afraid of a beau crying off because his future brother-in-law’ shirt points were too low.”

  “Yes, you survived the debut of your sister, did you not?”

  “Most excruciating experience of my life.”

  “How, uh, auspicious.”

  “Not to fear, dear boy. Everyone survives, and you shall have my experience to call upon.”

  “So kind.” The viscount chuckled and leaned back against the squabs, stretching his long legs as much as he could, then closed his eyes.

  Not for long, however. A loud snort of horns woke them all again, but this time it was more musical: a fanfare, a third brassy arpeggio.

  Henry came awake grumbling. “Wish them all at Jericho,” he insisted. “

  ”Along with that off-wheeler, kicks, can feel it in my feet.”

  The viscount looked through the coach’s misty window and caught a glimpse of something across the river through the dissipating fog. He blinked rapidly, shook his head, then quickly lowered the carriage glass. “Hal, look! Tell me you don’t see horses down there.”

  Henry leaned forward. What he saw caused him to become so animated that if he had been a smaller man he would almost have fallen out the window, but as only either end and not the middle would ever have fit through the tiny square, neither of the other two men was particularly concerned.

  “I do say!” Henry exclaimed.

  Buck refused to look, maintaining for the moment his exquisite poise. “Would one of you be so good as to explain the nature of the odd sound?” he asked without betraying an ounce of curiosity.

  Rather than answering, Cerestone rapped on the roof for the coachman t stop. Before the footman could let down the steps, he had jumped from the coach and made his way to the rest of a small hill, crushing dandelions and cow parsley and tall grass in his rush. He did not notice the beautiful spring leaves of the sparse beechwoods or the white blossoms of the cherry trees or greenish flowers of the laurel or the tiny yellow flowers of the dogs mercury hiding in the shade. Nor did he hear the plaintive call of the robin, the beautiful fluting of the blackbird. He saw and heard on what was across the water.

  There was a rather sharp bend in the river, a narrow point. When the fourgon carrying all their luggage caught them up, the viscount ordered Tench to fetch his spy glass.

  “Have you ever seen the like?” Cerestone asked softly as he held the glass to his eye. “It must be the ruins of Old Grassmere.”

  “Still ain’t sure I ain’t dreamin’,” Henry said. “Horses. Destriers.”

  Cerestone looked at him in surprise. “Why, yes, they are destriers. How’d you know that?”

  “A horse, ain’t it?” Henry returned, nodding.

  “It would be inherently good of one of you to describe what is so devastatingly marvelous,” Buck complained. “A quizzing glass only sees so far.”

  “Buck,” Henry said, heartily clapping him on the shoulder, “’tis a game of knights and horses.”

  “Chess?” the dandy asked in disbelief, brushing off his jacket.

  “A joust,” the viscount supplied.

  “Is that not, as one might say, medieval?” Buck asked in disbelief.

  "Exactly.” Cerestone’s green eyes fairly danced. “Complete with keep, pennants, pavilions, and knights.” The ruins of Old Grassmere sat on an island in the silvery river—bailey and motte, a castle and curtain wall surrounding and occupying an artificial hill. The inner keep where the family would have lived was relatively untouched by time, lacking only a roof; the outer keep remained as only a few feet of wall. Of other buildings—what might have been a barracks, mews for falconry, stables, kitchens—only a few telling stones lay about in the tall grass.

  Cerestone could see a road, built up and well kept, leading from the island to the other side of the river. At one time the castle would have been protected by a drawbridge, but he saw no evidence of one.

  Two knights—one dressed in a blue and gold jupon over armor, the other dressed in white with the red cross of St. George on his breast—lifted wooden lances held securely beneath their elbows and maneuvered decorated shields.

  Sunlight flashed off the polished helmets as the knights charged. Cerestone held his breath. The lances crossed the tilt—a fence covered with maroon velvet that separated the two horses. The blunted end of one lance slipped under the shield of the knight of St. George. The knight fell back in his tall saddle, feet and lance flying up as he toppled off the horse and landed with a thump on the hard ground.

  Cerestone winced. Servants dressed as pages and squires rushed from a pavilion to the fallen knight and helped him to his feet. He sighed. The knight seemed to be unhurt.

  He moved his glass to the royal loges, describing to Henry and Buck what he had just witnessed and what he was seeing now: a man dressed in kingly robes, a golden crown encircling his brow; a woman by him in red also wearing a crown. The woman stood up and beckoned the fallen knight to her. He obeyed almost reluctantly, removing his helm.

  She leaned out of the loge touched him about the head, then sat down, apparently satisfied.

  A number of women sat behind the man and woman; a flock of color—green, blue, purple, yellow costumes—topped by pointedly exotic headdresses trailing windblown wisps of gauze. His glass stopped on a young girl. She wore an overgown of turquoise, a tight-sleeved undergown of canary yellow, a chaplet of flowers on her head from which depended many bright ribbons. Rising as two knights on their destriers (which Henry explained were not true destriers but more likely the huge Suffolk Punches used as plowhorses) came to the stands, the girl pulled some ribbons from her headdress and from her braids, thick flaxen plaits that hung to her waist, and tied the ribbons to the lances of the knights.

  “Wynyate!” Henry suddenly exclaimed as borrowed the viscount’s spy glass. “Knew I’d remember ‘em. Earl Wynyate. Strange fellow. Obsessed with ancestors. Rode with one of the Edwards. Ancestor, I mean.” He handed the glass back, but Buck intercepted it with an incredibly fast movement and had a look at the scene himself.

  “Spring Tourney,” Henry continued in his halt-forward style of speaking. “Saint George's Day.”

  “So it is,” the viscount agreed. “I remember the name now. Wynyate. It was mentioned in the guidebook.”

  “Saw it once as a child. Don’t remember much.”

  “Who is the young girl with the pale hair?” Cerestone felt such a desire to be there among them, celebrating history, an experience far different from reading about it.

  “Alianora,” Henry said, finally remembering. He retrieved the spy glass from Buck and fixed it to his left eye. “Quiet sort. Played some medieval harp.”

  “How old is she? Couldn’t be more than fifteen,” the viscount observed.

  Henry frowned, handing the glass to Cerestone, dancing it around Buck’s insistent fingers. “Nineteen if she’s a day. Youngest boy’s at Oxford.” He looked back
at the coach, noticed the postilion was off the leader leaning against a tree. With a whistle he ordered the boy back to keep an eye on the cattle. Then he turned to Cerestone. “Been sent down. Heard of it. Painted some statuary at school.”

  “Ah,” said Buck. “We, my dear boy, were a bit more creative in our time. Statuary. Ha.”

  “So we were,” the viscount mused.

  Buck harrumphed elegantly and leaned stiffly toward Henry. “The time we nailed the library furniture to the ceiling,” he said.

  “Never caught,” Henry responded, rubbing his thumbs under his brown velvet lapels.

  Buck continued his reminiscence, warming to the subject. “And that marvelous time we carved our names on the keystone.

  Quite neat, I do say.”

  “Got caught,” Henry said, thumbs dropping to his pockets.

  “No question of who perpetrated that,” Cerestone added.

  “And that delicious forgery allowing us to visit the old tavern.”

  “You certainly were a complete hand, Buck.”

  Buck preened. Henry snorted inelegantly.

  “And”—Buck held up his gloved hand—“our most magnificent—“

  “Bull!” Henry expelled.

  “Why, yes,” Cerestone said, lowering the glass. “Putting that toothless old bull in the headmaster’s office.”

  “Almost sent down,” Henry choked.

  “But he gladly allowed us to graduate instead,” the viscount observed.

  A roar from the crowd across the river recaptured their attention.

  “What’s to?” Henry demanded. The viscount handed him the glass.

  “By Jove, knocked him flat. Good show. Gad, wish I could be there. Ain’t there a bridge across this demmed river?”

  Cerestone chuckled. “We passed one several miles back.”

  “No!” Buck planted his ivory walking stick most emphatically into the dandelions by his gleaming Hessians. “I most certainly will not turn back not at this juncture. We should never reach London in time for supper.” Despite his appearance, Buck could delicately wolf down more food than Henry and drink more bottles of port than most of London. A six bottle man. Cerestone had always admired that. So had Henry in a begrudging way.