A Bride Unveiled

by Jillian Hunter

  “If it pleases your ladyship,” he said, and moments later he escorted the unidentified gentleman into the room.

  Violet stared in silence at the man who approached her and bowed before she could steal a look at his face. He was husky, overdressed, and too dark to be mistaken for Kit. But as he straightened, he became familiar. A friend. She drew a breath.

  One of her beloved friends. He wasn’t Kit, but he was second-best. She broke into a delighted smile and cried inelegantly, “Eldie! Oh, Eldie! Look at you! You’re so distinguished and lovely and—Do come closer. I’d no idea it was you. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Why haven’t you answered my last three letters?”

  “Eldie?” her aunt said in a baffled undertone, and then he stepped closer to the window and the light glinted on his silver-rimmed spectacles. “Dear life, it is you, Eldbert Tomkinson. And what a pleasant surprise you are, indeed. Violet has mentioned many times that you distinguished yourself in the infantry. I cannot believe it was a decade ago that I watched your father riding you around the ring.”

  Eldbert’s color mounted, as if he were embarrassed to death; Violet wondered how he had ever withstood the rigors of the British army. He said, “The memories of our past friendship in Monk’s Huntley sustained me during many a dark night.”

  “How gratifying, Eldbert,” the baroness said, glancing at Twyford, who stood as if he could not be seen outside the door. “Tea and strawberry cheesecake, Twyford. Bring a little porter for our guest, too. Have you been back to Monk’s Huntley, Eldbert? Has it changed much since we have been gone?”

  Eldbert lifted his broad shoulders, cutting such an impressive figure that Violet ached to dance in glee around the room. His appearance today had to be a good omen. “It is remarkably unchanged, Lady Ashfield. I was hoping, in fact, that we all might return for a Christmas reunion.”

  “Christmas?” Violet had not thought past her end-of-summer wedding, and now that would not take place. She envisioned her old house, haunted by her uncle’s spirit and days that could never be recaptured. Would she and Kit be together this coming Christmas? Would her aunt understand and allow him into their lives? How could she ever choose? She dearly loved both of them.

  “Eldbert.” She shook her head, restraining herself from embracing him.

  She had no desire to sit sipping tea with him, acting as though the past had not happened, stiff tailed and clucking like pigeons in a park. But then, perhaps he would pretend to have no knowledge of their forbidden history. How dreadful to think he might even be ashamed of the escapades they had gone on with Kit. Could he have forgotten? He was an officer who had fought a war.

  The quick smile he sent her when Aunt Francesca reached around for her lap robe indicated that he remembered. And that he and Violet still had secrets to share. She shook her head. “How good to see you again.”

  He lifted his brow. “Is that all?”

  “I have missed you—I have missed your brains and your instinct for getting me out of mischief,” she whispered.

  “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I have missed your getting me into mischief. I am happy to say, though, that I’ve never made a blood pact with anyone else in my life.”

  She grimaced at the reminder. “Neither have I. But those were good times.”

  “Grand ones.”

  “It is rude to whisper, Violet,” her aunt said, beckoning Eldbert to her chair. “Sit, the pair of you. Your father is still alive, Eldbert?”

  He came toward her, Violet leading the way. “Yes, and he is well, thank you. But Lord Ashfield, madam, I—”

  “He died almost two years ago.”

  “I am sorry. I didn’t know. I have been away for such a long time.”

  “How could you know? I have made Violet visit all the places of my youth. We have been traveling ever since we left Monk’s Huntley.”

  The tea arrived, and Violet sat, curbing her impatience, as her aunt asked Eldbert endless questions about the village. It was her aunt’s way, she assumed, of recalling her own grand memories, and Violet thought it entirely innocent until unexpectedly Francesca asked Eldbert what he remembered about the churchyard below the old manor house.

  Eldbert glanced at Violet, who slowly lowered her cup to the table. “The old churchyard, Lady Ashfield,” he said. “The ruins, you mean?”

  “I wondered if it remained as desolate as ever,” she said. “Or if the parish had carried through on its threat to raze the ruins and erect a school upon the site.”

  “No one is going to build upon it for as long as the rumors persist.”

  “Rumors?”

  “There has always been talk of treasures buried in the forsaken graves. The grounds will be sacked into eternity.”

  Francesca stared at him, intrigued. “What sort of treasures do you mean?”

  “Those of a reclusive earl who had amassed a fortune during the Restoration and swore he would take it with him when he died. His relations pillaged the crypts, but I believe they were looking in the wrong place, as he intended them to do.”

  Francesca appeared to be fascinated. “What manner of fortune do you think one might find?”

  “Assuming a person knew where to look,” Eldbert answered, “you could unearth several chalices embedded with rubies, and gold plates from Jacobean days. The countess owned a casket of jewels that allegedly disappeared upon her death.”

  “Why were these valuables buried with the family?” inquired Francesca, her manner alert.

  Violet stared at Eldbert, silently imploring him to stop before he revealed anything that could implicate either of them in their past misdeeds. She half rose to ring for fresh tea, but Aunt Francesca raised her hand, the motion forbidding Violet to interrupt.

  “The earl’s family was stricken by the plague, as were a great many of the other persons buried improperly in the churchyard,” Eldbert said. “There was fear of contamination.”

  Francesca looked at him in horror. “And you played in the place? I shudder to think of what might have happened to the three of you. Digging in graves, my soul.”

  “I never dug in a grave,” Violet said before Eldbert could be led into revealing the existence of Kit and the tunnels by which he traveled.

  Eldbert blinked behind his spectacles. “We explored,” he said carefully. “We followed the maps I had made, which followed the streams—”

  “And Violet sketched,” Aunt Francesca said with a thoughtful frown. “She drew sketches of your adventures, and there was another boy.”

  “That would have been Ambrose,” Eldbert said, as Violet held her breath, dreading his response. “His father is also deceased, Lady Ashfield, and he has inherited.”

  “I am perfectly aware of that,” Francesca said in a subdued voice. “We are to attend his house party soon and I shall have to make peace with his mother.”

  Eldbert looked down at the plate of cheesecake Violet quickly offered him. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Talking of graves and those we have lost, over tea, was not my intention.”

  Francesca gave him a forgiving smile and rose without warning from her chair. Violet and Eldbert stood, each extending an arm toward her; Francesca deigned to give Eldbert her hand. “Nor was it mine. It is all right, Eldbert. I am glad to see you well. Now, why don’t the two of you go out into the garden while the sun is shining? If I can find my warm shawl, I might even join you.”

  Violet gave vent to a sigh.

  A minute or so later she and Eldbert had strolled to the end of the small garden, past the small pond to a low bench that sat against a wall smothered in old-world sweet peas.

  “My father disliked Ambrose when we were young,” Eldbert said, remaining on his feet until Violet sat down.

  “My aunt didn’t warm to him, either. He was a spiteful boy.”

  “I believe he might be a spiteful man,” Eldbert said. “I’m not sure what will happen at his party. I’d hate to think he was planning revenge.”

  “Revenge
for what?” Violet asked, frowning at him.

  “For not giving him his due. He always resented us for not doing what he told us to.”

  “That was ten years ago.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s changed all that much.”

  “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

  “In part.”

  “Then what else is there?”

  Or who else?

  Between them hung the unvoiced question.

  Nothing, no hidden treasure, no person in heaven or below, not Ambrose or the earl’s ghost, could engender in them the concern or curiosity that Kit did. He was a creation ex nihilo that an abandoned cemetery had pushed forth for the world to notice.

  He was the reason that Eldbert and Violet had run through another garden, and he was the reason they sat here today. He was all they had talked about in the old days.

  His appearance in the churchyard had brought them together. His departure had broken their band apart. “What else could Ambrose do to hurt us, Eldbert? Brag of his title? Parade about in new trousers?”

  He sat down beside her; the abstract air that had made him appear odd as a boy gave him dignity now. “I have something else to tell you. I assume it is still acceptable for us to share a confidence?”

  She stared into his spectacles. “Always, Eldbert. To the end of time.”

  “I found out myself only last month, when I visited London for a few days. It was shortly afterward that I finally received the last letter you had sent me. I know this will come as a shock, but Kit is here, Violet. He is in London, and he’s made a new man of himself.”

  She turned away.

  “Do you remember the retired captain who bought Kit’s indenture from the palace?” he asked her.

  The palace. She cringed at how naive she had ever been to believe the euphemism.

  “Do you remember,” he went on, “that we were afraid he would sell Kit to pirates or do him unspeakable harm?”

  She stared down at a cobweb that a spider had built between the strands of sweet peas whose tendrils curled like question marks in the sun. The silk appeared fragile to the eye, too delicate to sustain the slightest damage.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “But—”

  “Violet,” he said in an urgent voice, “I visited his academy. He runs a fencing school, and I have seen no finer swordsman in the years I served at war. He did not notice my presence in his crowd of admirers. But I know that if he had glanced my way, he would have recognized me. And my only thought was to call out my congratulations for what he had overcome.”

  She turned her head. “You didn’t?”

  He paused, clearly taken aback by the passion she had not been able to hide. “No. I realized before I could push my way through the crowd that public acknowledgment could lead to questions neither of us wanted to answer.”

  She put her hand on his. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” He shook his head. “I left as he finished his demonstration, but later that night I returned to the school to see if I could find him alone. There were people there even then. Violet, I did not go back.”

  She stared past him, her gaze lifting to the rear of the house. What was that shadow in her bedroom window? Someone moving in her room? She felt a twinge of concern. Had she left Kit’s card where Delphine could see it? She reassured herself that she’d put it in a safe place—under the Bible on her nightstand. No one would think to look there.

  “I felt as if I’d betrayed him,” Eldbert said, staring down uncomfortably at her hand. “But I thought of you, and of what might happen if you met him by chance before your wedding. How would you explain your friendship with Kit to your fiancé? I didn’t know whether Kit would give you away.”

  “And this is your secret?”

  “Yes—I thought I ought to come to you immediately and prepare you in case you were caught unaware in his company.” He gave her a grim smile. “I could too easily imagine Kit with his fencing skill meeting you and your fiancé.”

  “Yes, Eldbert,” she said simply, nodding in agreement, biting her lip to discourage a smile.

  “Violet,” he said in a suspicious voice, “you are taking this well. Do you think I’ve made too much over nothing?”

  She broke into an irrepressible smile. “Oh, Eldbert.”

  “You already knew,” he said in astonishment. “You let me ramble on, and all the time you knew.”

  She released his hand and glanced up again at the house. Her bedroom curtains hung unmoving. Perhaps she had imagined that furtive shadow. “It is a dangerous situation,” she said, instinctively lowering her voice. “I don’t know what to do. Kit and I have seen each other. We are . . . in love.”

  She expected him to gasp, to shake his head in chagrin or give her a long lecture, as the young Eldbert would have done. Now, he merely frowned; the surprise had already gone from his face, replaced by concern.

  “A dangerous situation, indeed,” he said. “Then my fears were not unfounded.”

  “My aunt doesn’t know yet, Eldbert, and I’m afraid of what will happen when I tell her the truth.”

  “I am afraid of what will happen when Ambrose brings us back together. It could easily come out that we knew Kit as he was once the four of us are in attendance at his party. I can tell you this much—I will stand by you and Kit no matter what.”

  Francesca convinced Delphine that she needed to borrow Violet’s shawl. It pained Francesca to invade her niece’s privacy. She had never done so before, even though she had been tempted on occasion. Fear of discovery, unfortunately, and not respect had stopped her.

  Francesca had always been afraid of what she would find if she pried into Violet’s life too deeply. Even now she braced herself as she entered the room. As if it were yesterday she could see her sister lying still on her bed against a vivid wash of blood. And a baby in the midwife’s arm. A living, monkey-faced creature who had been spawned by sin through no fault of her own.

  From that moment onward Francesca had felt she was protecting her niece against possible dangers that had been set into motion on the day of her birth.

  Francesca had manipulated Violet’s world to shield her from the sins that might tempt her. She thought she had succeeded. Her niece was betrothed to a respectable gentleman, and Francesca should be able to attend their wedding day with a happy heart. But her instincts said the opposite. She crept to the window and studied the two people in the garden. Violet seemed animated now, as she had been while watching that mock fencing contest in the park.

  But how could the match have made her happy?

  How could comparing Godfrey’s stilted jabs to the other swordsman’s exquisite parries have failed to make her miserable? To know she was marrying a handsome oaf when there were beautiful knights in the world? Had she really convinced Violet that respectability was more important than a love match? Perhaps Francesca no longer believed it herself.

  She could die knowing her duty had been fulfilled when she was convinced that Violet had found the protector she deserved.

  But first she had to know why she felt that she had met that young swordsman before, or at least whom he resembled.

  And she had to find out why he had made Violet seem happier than she had been since her childhood, since the days when they had lived in Monk’s Huntley.

  The answer lay directly in front of Francesca once she turned from the window. She did not have to hunt for it. The answer lay upon Violet’s desk, in an old sketch atop a tidy pile of thank-you letters to be posted.

  Violet was no great artist. But she had captured the boy’s face in its defiant youth. Francesca reached out for the drawing. If she tore it into shreds it would not change a thing. Violet was her mother, Anne-Marie, all over again, letting romance lead her and not practicality. Nothing that Francesca had done had thwarted the girl’s true nature.

  Nothing had destroyed the passion in her soul. And, unexpectedly, the realization brought Francesca great relief.

&nbs
p; Chapter 22

  Ambrose, third Viscount Charnwood, examined his shaven face in the mirror for evidence of the heavy jowls he had inherited along with his title and affluence. Despite his wife Clarinda’s reassurances that he did not show any sign of the family dewlaps yet, Ambrose noted the slack skin that hung beneath his jaw. Clarinda saw no flaws in either her snorting pack of pug dogs or the two sons she had provided Ambrose and abandoned to their exhausted governess.

  Dogs.

  Boisterous offspring.

  Which of them had made a puddle on the pair of cashmere trousers that Ambrose had discovered under the bed this morning? His eyes watered at the lingering aroma. He feared it had permeated the wallpaper. How could he debut at a club smelling like a chamber pot? Or at least smelling one in his mind. The maids had not mopped it all up. He pressed a scented hankie to his nose.

  He heard the boys, ages six and seven, creating an unearthly commotion on the formal terrace in the gardens below his bedchamber. He wandered to the window. Every article his children discovered, be it a twig or a chop knife, became a weapon of some sort. Had he behaved with such uncouth abandon as a child? He preferred to believe not. He had been bullied into walking through wild places.

  It was no use trying to forget his childhood. The memories of Monk’s Huntley assaulted Ambrose at the most inconvenient moments. When he cheated at cards with the boys, for instance, he could hear Eldbert reprimanding him. When he was demonstrating to his sons the correct way to hold a sword, he could hear Kit snorting in derision or see him reaching out to position Ambrose’s thumb on the grip.

  His face darkened in resentment. The old criticism still stung. What gall. A beggar correcting a Charnwood. An inmate touching Ambrose’s clean gloves when who knew what diseases besides the measles he carried on his person? It might be true that Kit’s influence had given Ambrose some advantage later in life. Ambrose’s fencing master at school had twice remarked that Ambrose showed a flair for the sword.