Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

by Annie Burrows

  Given the way she had treated her in the past, this was clearly what the housekeeper expected. Cora frowned. Though she could not like the woman, she did not know if she had the heart to fire her. It would be hard for her to seek another post at her age. And utterly humiliating to ask for references from a woman she despised.

  Suddenly the tension in the room became too much. She went to the armchair by the empty fireplace and sank into it wearily.

  ‘Would you please get me some tea?’

  ‘Tea?’ the woman echoed. ‘Or something stronger?’ And then after an infinitesimal pause, ‘His lordship did say you had suffered a shock.’

  Cora might have been imagining the taunt, but she did not think so. Mrs Paulding was bracketing her with her brother, who no doubt had a decanter of something ‘stronger’ in his own room, to which he applied all too frequently, judging by the pungency of his breath.

  Last time she had been here, she had put up with Mrs Paulding’s attitude, because she felt the woman had only been following the line taken by Kit’s parents, and because she did not have the experience to know what to do. But she was not a timid seventeen-year-old, with everything to lose should she put a foot wrong, any more.

  ‘If you do not wish to continue working here, I shall quite understand,’ she said coldly.

  Mrs Paulding’s mouth snapped shut. With one last defiant toss of her head she stalked to the door, leaving Cora to wonder whether she would be getting a tray of tea and cakes, as befitted a female guest, or a pint of gin, in keeping with the low opinion the woman held of her.

  Uttering a groan, Cora lowered her head to her hands, almost wishing she could choose Robbie’s road to oblivion. It had to be easier than wrestling with the maelstrom of thoughts and impressions that were whirling through her head. She felt dizzy with them. Sick.

  How she wished Kit had never brought her here! She could have gone on being Mary, his mistress, and they could both have known some measure of happiness. Instead of which everything was coming unravelled.

  From the moment they had driven into that dark, brooding forest that surrounded Kingsmede, she had been pitched back in time seven years. To the very day life as she had known it had come to an end.

  She rubbed at the dull ache that was building from the nape of her neck. She had slowly been learning to let go of her fear of the unknown, that was the trouble. The very first time she had glimpsed Lord Matthison in the street, and she had sensed her shadowy past reaching out to grab her, she had acted out of instinct, and run from him. But she had not quite managed to outrun the persistent feelings he aroused. She had begun to daydream about him. The daydreams she had smothered by focusing on her work. And the dreams, that were now, she realised, based on things that had actually happened, she dealt with by waking herself up from them.

  That was a trick she had developed, to save herself from the recurring nightmares about being locked in the cellar. And before that…in the attic room, where she had sensed danger hovering close by, she had wrapped herself round with a cloak of ignorance. It had been her only refuge against her gaoler. She had kept on hiding behind it, even when she no longer had any need to. Pushing away any stray thought that might threaten her hard-earned tranquillity. Because she had enough to contend with, just recovering from Lord Sandiford’s attack, and learning to survive in the harsh conditions of Madame Pichot’s sweatshop, without the added burden of the pain she would have brought with her from her former life.

  Time and circumstances had given her material to shore up her defences against the truth, too. For she had fallen in love with a polite, shabbily dressed boy called Christopher Brereton. Kit, to her. He bore only a faint resemblance to the hard-eyed, wealthy gentleman who had accosted her so angrily. And she could truthfully tell herself she had never met anyone by the name of Lord Matthison before. Because she had not. The man who had borne that name seven years previously had been Kit’s father. And from what he and Robbie had told her, she had always pictured him as an elderly, portly, carelessly dressed man with a complexion coarsened from drink and dissipation.

  Without even knowing she was doing it, she had stubbornly resisted recognising him, cunningly shielding herself from risk of further pain.

  She slapped the arm of her chair in vexation. It did not matter if she worked out how her mind had managed to protect itself from the prospect of unbearable hurt, her respite was well and truly over now.

  A knock on the door, heralding the arrival of a maid with the tea things, could not have come at a more timely moment for Cora. Heartily relieved to have a diversion from the tortuous workings of her mind, she got up, and opened the door herself.

  The young girl, standing on the other side, looked rather startled, but hastily recovered and bobbed a curtsy. The maid, who bore a tray stacked with pots, cups, cream and sugar bowls, was followed by a footman with a cake stand laden with cakes, sandwiches, slices of bread and butter, and pots of jewel-bright preserves. Behind him came a second maid with two cans of hot water, and a third with arms full of fluffy towels.

  Cora could not help contrasting all this attention with the neglect she had suffered in this room before. Hot water! An unheard-of luxury in the Kingsmede she had known, but Cora could definitely see steam wisping from the can as the girl took it into the dressing room. She had never been able to wash in anything even approaching tepid before, and when she had been hungry, she, Robbie and Kit had occasionally raided the larder for ingredients that she had thrown together into something resembling a meal on the kitchen table.

  Either Mrs Paulding had decided she wanted to keep her job after all, or Cora had allies amongst the lower staff, none of whom, she now noticed, had served under the previous Lord and Lady Matthison. By the way the maids and footman were all bowing and scraping, she guessed the latter. They all seemed extremely keen to ingratiate themselves with the woman they believed was about to become the new mistress of Kingsmede.

  She frowned. Last time she had been here, everyone had believed she was about to become the new mistress of Kingsmede, too, but that had not prevented them from uniting against her behind Mrs Paulding’s formidable antagonism.

  The only person who had even pretended to be friendly had been Frances Farrell. The vicar’s daughter.

  She did not want to think about her. She really didn’t, but she had rashly opened the floodgate in her mind, by the tiniest crack, and the force of what had built up behind it was too powerful to let her slam it back shut.

  Tottering to the tea table by the window, she sank to the chair, and accepted a large slice of fruit-cake from the obsequious footman.

  ‘Yes, that will be all,’ she managed to say, once the footman had poured her tea exactly as she liked it. Part of her wanted to beg the servants to stay. With them to distract her, she could almost manage to ignore the latest pack of memories that had come baying round her like hounds scenting a fresh kill.

  She had felt so lonely and friendless and insecure back then that she had welcomed the slightly older girl’s overtures of friendship. Because Frances was Mrs Paulding’s niece by marriage, she had been a frequent visitor to Kingsmede. In spite of her family connection, Cora had soon begun to look forward to her visits. Robbie had spoken about Frances before she had arrived, telling her she was a grand lass. And Frances had been such a good listener that Cora had opened her heart to her. She had confided her intention of impressing Mrs Paulding with her grasp of household economy. She had admitted she would not care if Christopher could not afford to dress her fashionably, or show her the entertainments London had to offer. She would be content to stay on his rundown estate all year round, if need be, so long as they were together. She had waxed lyrical about how she would be as good as any heiress for him, with her plans for economy and good housekeeping. And her boundless love.

  She set her cup down in her saucer with a snap.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  She could not believe how stupid she had been. How blind to what had been
going on around her.

  The moist fruit-cake turned to ashes in her mouth, which almost choked her as she forced herself to swallow the knowledge of her monumental idiocy.

  Frances, just like her aunt, had eventually been only too pleased to enlighten the starry-eyed Cora about Christopher Brereton’s nature.

  ‘I am so sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,’ Frances had said, laying her hand on Cora’s forearm, ‘but Christopher is playing you false. He has gone to meet the young lady in question this very morning.’

  ‘He has gone out with Robbie!’ she had protested. ‘They have ridden over to Bamford to see the tailor about wedding clothes!’

  Frances had shaken her head pityingly. ‘I have no idea where your brother may be, but Christopher has gone to a certain woodman’s hut in the western beech wood, where he always meets her. If you do not believe me, why don’t you go there and see for yourself?’

  She had flounced down to the stables in a blaze of outrage, determined to prove Frances wrong. The first blow had been to find Kit’s horse in its stall. If he had gone to Bamford, he would have ridden there. She had gone cold inside. Why had he lied about going to Bamford? More by luck than judgement, she had managed to get the massive creature saddled, and scrambled on to its back with scant regard for the propriety of hitching her morning dress up round her hips.

  And soon she’d had proof he had lied about everything. Through the grimy window of the tumbledown hut she had seen him holding a practically naked woman in his arms. She had stood there long enough to see him kiss the woman whose bared breasts were crushed against his waistcoat and then, at the thought she had let those lying lips loose against her own mouth, she had fallen to her knees and lost her breakfast.

  Everything after that had taken on the quality of a nightmare. She had managed to remount the horse, just as the heavens had opened, and the creature had taken off on a course she had not cared to correct. She had no idea where she wanted to go anyway. Where could she go to escape from Kit’s betrayal? Against a backdrop of flashing lightning, and the thunder of horse’s hooves, she had felt her heart tearing apart in her breast.

  Cora drew in a great, shuddering breath, and wrapped her arms about herself.

  She was not a seventeen-year-old virgin any longer, with no experience of the base nature of men. She could appreciate now that, technically, Kit had never lied to her. For he had never once told her he loved her, or promised to be faithful. She had believed what she wanted to believe, without being offered one scrap of evidence.

  She got to her feet, too sickened by her own culpability to stomach so much as the smell of food, and found herself wandering over to the wardrobe.

  It was the one item of furniture in the room that looked exactly as she remembered it. It appeared frozen in time, with one of the hinges still slightly askew, and the carved oak-leaf panels peppered with woodworm.

  Had he preserved it, she wondered on a swell of something like hope, for some sentimental reason? When they had talked about this room in the coach earlier, she had gained the impression he regarded it as a shrine to her memory. She had dreaded the thought he might want her to put on a dead woman’s clothes…

  But now, the thought that he might have kept all her things, preserving them, treasuring them…

  With wildly beating heart, she tugged the door open.

  It was empty.

  Something inside her crystallized and froze solid.

  Of course the wardrobe was empty.

  Just as his black heart was empty!

  The only reason, it came to her in a flash, that he had made such a show of clinging to her memory, was to get rid of poor Miss Winters!

  But if he thought she was going to let him use her to break another poor young woman’s heart, as he had broken hers…

  ‘No!’ she cried, slamming the door on the empty wardrobe and marching over to her trunk, which sat at the foot of the bed.

  It was time to change her gown, and go downstairs, and set a few things straight.

  Kneeling down, she flung open the lid, and plunged her hands into the jumble of goods she had amassed in her life as Mary. The mingled smells of hard work, cheap soap, and Molly’s scent that wafted up as she rummaged for the gown she sought were vastly comforting.

  Ah, there it was! Her Sunday best. A long-sleeved gown of bronze silk with a square neckline. Probably not the sort of thing ladies wore to dinner in the country, but she did not care. She was not a lady. And she had no intention of becoming one.

  There was more of Mary in her now, than Cora. Not that Cora had been a lady either. In fact, Cora had not been very much of anything, she huffed as she pulled off her stained travelling gown. No wonder she had never regained the strength to resurface after having all her hopes so comprehensively trampled in the mud.

  She had been, she frowned, tugging her fresh gown over her head, a timid child to start with who had been prevented by an overbearing father from developing any opinions of her own. Never mind expressing them! And then her mother had taught her how to become more or less invisible. There had only been a brief period where she had tried to unfurl her wings. That summer, after her parents had died, while Robbie was too busy to keep her caged. She had flown free with Kit, like a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis…until the day he had ripped her wings from her heart and she had spiralled downward into despair.

  But Mary was made of sterner stuff. She lifted her chin and regarded her reflection squarely in the mirror. Mary had fought off the lecherous Lord Sandiford, preserving her virtue whilst leaving her mark on his vile, grasping hands. She had gone to London, got a job, excelled at it and then, when she had felt so inclined, had been bold enough to take a lover.

  Cora would never have been capable of doing any of that!

  Giving Cora’s prim reflection one last derisive glance, Mary squared her shoulders and went downstairs.

  Lord Matthison and Robbie were waiting for her in the antechamber that led to the dining room. Both got to their feet as she entered.

  ‘I hope you will be in a fit state to travel in the morning, Robbie,’ she said tartly, eyeing the almost empty glass dangling from his fingers. ‘So that you can take me home to Auchentay.’

  It was only as she took a comfortably upholstered chair, and accepted a glass of wine from the same footman who had brought her tea, that it occurred to her that Robbie might not live there any longer. That he might even have a wife, who would have something to say about a stray sister turning up uninvited on her doorstep.

  But it was Lord Matthison who answered her, once he had dismissed the footman from the room.

  ‘Your home is here with me now, in case you have forgotten.’

  ‘There is no need to mock me, my lord,’she snapped back. ‘I may have been suffering from some kind of…’ She shook her head as she failed to find words to adequately describe what had been like a dam, holding back all those overwhelmingly painful memories. ‘Some kind of blockade in my mind,’ she eventually continued. ‘But now that it has collapsed, I remember all too clearly the reasons why I should never have agreed to marry you in the first place!’

  Lord Matthison got to his feet, his face ominously grim.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me you ran out on me seven years ago?’

  She had just taken a breath, to explain what had happened to her shortly after she had galloped away from the woodcutter’s hut, when Lord Matthison flung his glass into the fireplace with such force that it exploded into a cloudburst of splinters.

  ‘You faithless bitch!’ He swore, turning away and striding to the far side of the room. When he turned round his face was contorted with rage. ‘After all the protestations of love you made, you did not even have the decency to come to me and break off the engagement to my face!’

  ‘No…’ Of course she hadn’t! She had not had the chance. ‘You see…’

  But he did not let her finish. Striding over to where Robbie sat slumped in his chair, following the
argument through narrowed eyes, he said, ‘For seven years you’ve let your brother mourn you. And as for me…hah!’ He looked her brother straight in the eye as he said, ‘For seven years I have had to bear the burden of having the man who was once my best friend believing I had killed you! Do you know he accused me to the magistrate, Cora, after you ran off? I could have hanged! Only that they could not find a body…’

  ‘Of course not,’she began. Because she had not died. Only lost her memory.

  And how she wished it had never come back! Bearing his indifference back then had all but destroyed her. Facing his contempt was tearing her apart all over again.

  ‘No, because you were never dead. In spite of letting us all believe it! How little you care for anyone but yourself! Well, let me tell you something.’ He strode back to her, leaning his hands on the arms of the chair, making her cringe back in her seat. ‘I have no intention of letting you run out on me a second time. You are not going to crawl back to Scotland and evade your responsibilities towards me this time!’

  ‘You…you cannot stop me,’she gasped, almost afraid of this man’s unleashed anger. ‘R-Robbie…’she pleaded.

  ‘Don’t think your brother will take you back into his home now. Not now I have bedded you!’

  She heard Robbie gasp. She wanted to turn her head to see what he was thinking, but somehow she could not tear her eyes away from Kit’s.

  ‘You could be carrying my child,’ he growled, his eyes raking down the front of her gown, coming to rest on the small mound of her belly.

  Why, oh, why had he gone and told Robbie that? If only he had kept that quiet, she could have gone home to Scotland and lived a quiet, spinster existence, keeping house for her brother. But now Robbie would never rest until they were married. Look how adamant he had been that Kit should marry her, when all he had done was kiss her!

  But how could he imagine she might contemplate any kind of relationship with him when he could accuse her of such dreadful things, with such implacable hatred for her burning from his eyes?