by Balogh, Mary
Oh, gracious heaven! Lydia watched, half paralyzed, as Mrs. Piper turned and strode out of her garden, leaving the gate swinging behind her, and along the street until she was out of sight behind the copse. Snowball trotted along the path, though she stopped outside the gate and stood in the middle of the road looking after her before trotting back in, wet mud and all.
Lydia closed the door and stood with her back to it, her eyes squeezed shut, the plate hugged to her bosom with both arms. It took several minutes for the jumbled ball that was her mind to sort itself into coherent thought.
So that morning when she had seen Jeremy’s head above her fence, it had not been the first time he had looked. He had seen Harry chopping her wood. He had seen him come inside for refreshments. He even knew the visit had lasted one hour, though it was very unlikely he possessed a pocket watch. He knew about the visit that evening. Oh, dear God, he knew about that. He knew she had walked home from Tom and Hannah’s with Harry—Mrs. Piper had not been at that social gathering, but Jeremy must have seen her anyway. He had seen Harry kiss her forehead last night.
Had he been spying on her for some time, then? No, that was not a question. He had been spying.
But why?
Because Isaiah had saved his life and he had taken it upon himself to make sure she was safe? Quite frankly that did not sound convincing. Because he wanted to be a sort of watchdog, then, making sure that she was honoring Isaiah’s memory with upright living? That would make sense surely only if he hoped she was not. He must know that his mother disliked and resented her—but why?—and would like nothing more than something specific with which to reproach her. Mrs. Piper had always been a bit of a gossip. A spiteful one, for the gossip she spread was never of the happy variety. Viciously pious was how Lydia had sometimes thought of her. She had loved nothing better than to bring to Isaiah’s notice the perceived transgressions of her neighbors. To his credit, he had never encouraged her.
Other people did, however.
Most people, of course, if they were strictly honest with themselves, enjoyed a bit of gossip, especially if it was basically harmless. There were some, though, who thrived upon the sort of gossip that tore someone else’s reputation to tatters. Such people generally showed little concern for facts, especially if the facts threatened to disprove what they wanted to believe.
Lydia drew a deep breath and released it slowly. It was too much to hope, she supposed, that Mrs. Piper would keep her moral outrage to herself. Or that she would keep to herself all the facts she had amassed, courtesy of Jeremy’s spying, to prove that she, Lydia, was a woman of loose morals who had set out to get her hooks into Major Westcott. Of course it was too much to hope. And those bare facts, she did not doubt for a moment, would be fleshed out and embellished until they were quite unrecognizable as truth.
And the facts themselves? Well, she was not entitled to feel the full force of righteous indignation, was she? She had lain with Harry.
But yes, of course she was entitled to her fury. They were both adults, she and Harry. They had both passed the age of majority long ago. They were both unmarried and unattached. It was no one’s business what they did together in private. Yet they had both been aware that in a place like this people would make it their business. They had bowed to that awareness and given each other up—as lovers and even as friends.
They had given each other up precisely because of the possibility of what was now happening anyway.
For there was no possible chance that Mrs. Piper would keep her outrage and her facts to herself. Lydia was about to become the victim of an explosion of salacious gossip. Her life, her precious life of quiet freedom and independence, was about to change. Forever. She did not believe she was overdramatizing.
“Oh, Snowball,” she said with a sigh when she looked down at the trail of muddy paw prints that stretched from the door into the kitchen. “Look what you have done.”
And look what I have done, she added silently.
The shreds of his contentment seemed to have deserted him, Harry admitted to himself later that same afternoon, and he despaired of getting them back. It had all started at Christmas, of course. But then it had continued into this thing with Lydia Tavernor, which had stumbled along from its improbable beginnings until it flared into a brief, uncontrolled burst of passion. And last night had not helped, even though he usually enjoyed the village assemblies.
What had happened, he supposed, was that during the past few months he had come face-to-face with the essential emptiness of his existence. It had been bound to happen sooner or later. He had this large house and park to enjoy, but no one with whom to share them. He had a troubled past, which was best left where it was, and a present that was marginally satisfying— though lonely, damn it— but no future to look forward to except more of the same. Somehow more of the same, with which he had been perfectly content for four years, seemed like a dreary prospect.
There was no one special in his life.
No one to love or to cherish, to use his mother’s word.
He had come to hate that word whenever it popped into his head.
And no sex.
There had been plenty of the latter during the years with his regiment, lusty and satisfying. There had been none during the years of his convalescence, very little since.
And then Lydia.
He had spent an hour or so of the morning in his steward’s office, going over the account books, and then another hour or two out on the home farm, mostly admiring the new and not-so-new lambs. He had sat down to a cold luncheon, for the plainness of which his housekeeper, Mrs. Sullivan, had apologized with the peculiar excuse that she and the kitchen staff were more than usually busy taking inventory of their supplies. Afterward Harry had wandered out to the summerhouse among the trees east of the manor. He sat inside it now, out of the chilly wind, on the leather-upholstered seat that circled the interior wall of glass, gazing out over the park and across one corner of the village to the countryside beyond.
Perhaps this restlessness was a healthy sign. Perhaps it showed that he had finally and fully recovered his health and was ready to move on to a more active phase of his life. But what would that be? Or perhaps the restlessness had something—or even everything—to do with Lydia Tavernor. He frowned at the thought. For why should it? Whatever there had been between them was over, by mutual consent. She was not looking to marry again, and he was not ready for marriage yet—was he? She no longer wanted a lover, and he was not in search of a mistress. Not here, anyway. Not anywhere, actually.
Dash it all. He wished he could get his life back, the one he had lived with such contentment and with very little reflection just a few months ago. The maddening thing about life, though, was that it would never go backward. It would not stand still either. And it did not offer any clear image of what was ahead. Which was perhaps just as well.
Maybe he needed to get away for a while. But where? London, heaven help him?
His thoughts were interrupted at that moment by movement among the trees to his right. He brightened immediately when he saw Tom Corning striding in his direction. School must be finished for the day. Tom opened the door of the summerhouse unbidden and stepped inside.
“Ah, warmth,” he said, closing the door quickly and rubbing his hands together.
“How did you find me?” Harry asked as he slid farther along the seat so Tom could sit beside him and enjoy the same view.
“Your butler thought you would be either at the lake or here,” Tom said. “I tried here first. It would be madness to wander about the lake on a day like today. Why is he all dressed up so smartly?”
“Brown?” Harry said. “My butler? Is he? He looked his normal self when I saw him a short while ago. Not that I was paying particular attention. How was school today?”
“Fine.” Tom leaned forward slightly and rested his forearms across his thighs with his hands dangling down between them. He was looking down at the floor instead of admiring the view
Harry had made available to him. “Harry, old chap, I think you ought to be warned that you were seen last night.”
“Seen.” Harry frowned at the back of his friend’s head. “Well, that is hardly surprising, since I do not have a magician’s power to make myself invisible. Let me see. I was at the assembly rooms for three or four hours, mingling and talking with almost every adult from the village and the countryside around. I danced almost every set. No, every set. And I was seen, was I? How very shocking. Seen to be doing what exactly?”
“Kissing Mrs. Tavernor in the doorway of her cottage,” Tom said. “I am not saying there is anything scandalous about that, especially when you must have had every reason to expect privacy from prying eyes. But the person who saw you was the lad who gives me the most trouble with truancy from school, the lad Tavernor saved from drowning. He is a sneak and a poacher as well as a truant and has apparently taken it upon himself to keep an eye on Tavernor’s widow, with what motive one can only imagine. My guess would be that he does it so he can report back to his mother on anything Mrs. Tavernor does that might reflect badly upon the late vicar’s memory. She was one of his more fanatical followers.”
“The Piper lad?” Harry said. “He says he saw me kissing Lydia last night? Then he is a damned liar in addition to the other things you listed.”
“Lydia, is it?” Tom asked, turning his head briefly to glance at his friend.
“I saw her to her door beneath an umbrella because it was raining,” Harry said, “just as I did a few minutes before that with Mrs. Bailey. I stepped inside for perhaps thirty seconds while she went to fetch a scarf she had knitted for me. In return for a pile of wood I chopped for her a few weeks ago, before you ask,” he added when Tom raised his eyebrows. “I said thank you and I said good night and—ah, yes— I pecked her on the forehead. And left. A peck and a kiss are quite distinct things, Tom.”
“I will take your word for it,” his friend said, sounding uncomfortable. “It’s none of my business anyway. But even if you did kiss her, I don’t know why there should be such a big fuss about it.”
“Is there a big fuss?” Harry’s stomach was doing funny things.
“Afraid so,” Tom said. “Or so Hannah says. I found her pacing when I got home from school. Jeremy ran home to his mother last night with his shocking report, and Mrs. Piper confronted Mrs. Tavernor at her house this morning. Mrs. Tavernor apparently told her she would entertain whatever man she wanted to entertain and however many she chose and that she would kiss whomever she wanted to kiss and Mrs. P could go to the devil with a flea in her ear. Though I cannot quite imagine the lady using those exact words or even saying some of the things she is reputed to have said. I daresay what she did say to Mrs. Piper had been reworded and exaggerated and embellished beyond all recognition by the time it got to Hannah’s ears and then mine. But whatever the truth of it is, Harry, the whole silly episode has blown up into what seems like a grand scandal that will enliven everyone’s dull lives for days or even weeks to come. Hannah was bursting with indignation when I got home and would not even let me sit down to enjoy a cup of tea before coming to warn you of what is in store for you. She fairly pushed me out the door.”
“Good God.” Harry gazed at him. “And devil take it and any other blasphemy you care to add.” He jumped to his feet. “God damn it all, Tom, I’ll throttle that boy. What the devil was he doing out on a night like last night anyway?”
“Spying upon Mrs. Tavernor, apparently,” Tom said.
“Drumming up mischief,” Harry said. “But what a storm in a teacup, Tom. What he saw was one innocent peck on the forehead, for the love of God. With the door open. In full sight of my coachman if he had cared to watch. A grand seduction scene indeed. Was ever anything more ridiculous?” He laughed, but his laughter somehow fell flat on its face.
Tom’s discomfort seemed to have grown. He rubbed a finger along the side of his nose. “That is not the whole of it, Harry,” he said. “Mrs. Piper has spent the day pulling a whole lot of other dirty laundry out of her bag and strewing it everywhere. That kiss last night was the mere culmination of other things she has been keeping to herself because she hates to gossip.”
“What the devil?” Harry glared at his friend as though he were the one with the upturned laundry bag.
“In Mrs. Piper’s mind,” Tom explained, “the Reverend Tavernor is a saint and a martyr and an angel and perhaps even a little bit of the deity himself all rolled into one. She believes that in order to do justice to his memory, Mrs. Tavernor ought to be the Virgin Mary and all the female saints combined. You walked her home from our house one evening and from Solway’s a week or so after that. You apparently spent a whole morning at her house chopping wood—you just admitted it to me—before going inside and shutting the door for what must have been considerably more than a glass of water since you remained there for a whole hour. You went back the same evening and stayed there for an indeterminate amount of time—I’ll wager Jeremy cannot count high enough, more shame to his teacher. The Lord only knows what you were up to while you were there, but I daresay there is no shortage of speculation, especially as the curtains must have been drawn so Jeremy could not see inside.”
“Damn their eyes,” Harry said. “The whole lot of them.”
“You danced with her last night when she had already told several other men that she would not dance at all,” Tom continued. “You got her laughing and sparkling. And you gave her and Mrs. Bailey a ride home but dropped Mrs. Bailey off at the vicarage first before taking Mrs. Tavernor home and kissing her most scandalously. She has no one living at the cottage with her, not even a maid. That in itself is a shocking thing to someone like Mrs. Piper. She can have chosen to live quite alone—Mrs. Tavernor, I mean— for only one possible reason, and a lot of people are quite certain they know very well what that reason is. This is not me talking, Harry. It is not Hannah talking either or any number of other people with some sense between their ears. But it is what large segments of the village are buzzing about. It does not take determined gossips very long to weave a growing and pretty damning narrative out of the most threadbare of facts.”
“It is all pure nonsense,” Harry protested. Except for one thing. But that was no one’s damned business except his and Lydia’s. “Good God, Tom.”
Tom looked up at him and shrugged. “You know it is all nonsense, Harry,” he said. “I know. Hannah is getting together with Denise Franks. She was merely waiting for me to come home from school first. The two of them are going to the vicarage to talk with Mrs. Bailey and the vicar to discuss what they can do. They all know it is nonsense. But wildfire is pretty difficult to put out once it has got a hold. So is scandal.”
“Scandal,” Harry said, pushing the fingers of one hand impatiently through his hair. “That is a bit extreme, surely. But I do know gossip. And one can be sure it will focus almost exclusively upon Lydia. Very little of it, I suppose, will land upon me. Devil take it, Tom, I could commit murder. But throttling young Piper would be a bit like slamming the stable door shut after the horse has bolted—or some such nonsense. I had better go and have a word with Mrs. Piper. If she is at home, that is, and not still gallivanting about from house to house, spreading her laundry and her poison.”
What he was also going to find himself doing, he thought, ridiculous as it seemed, was persuading Lydia Tavernor to marry him.
He jerked open the door of the summerhouse and strode out onto the path through the trees back to the house without waiting for Tom. Good God, he might have known something like this would happen. He had known, in fact. They had both known. It was why they had ended what was between them, even the possibility of a friendship that had shown some promise.
Harry had worked himself into a towering fury by the time he reached the terrace and approached the house. He was about to bark an order to his butler, who was conveniently standing just outside the open front doors, dressed indeed and rather bizarrely in what looked like his best uniform
, to have his horse saddled and brought up to the door within the next ten minutes. But sound penetrated his consciousness and brought him to an abrupt halt as he swiveled about to look along the drive to see what it was.
Two carriages were approaching. Grand traveling carriages that did not belong to anyone local. The first one was already turning onto the terrace and rocking to a stop a few feet from Harry. He could see bonnets and feathers inside.
“Grandmama,” he muttered. The Dowager Countess of Riverdale was on the seat facing the horses with Great-aunt Edith Monteith, her sister, beside her. Opposite them sat a young man and woman Harry could not immediately identify.
He turned his head sharply to look, aghast, at the second carriage. A familiar ducal crest was emblazoned upon the door. Within it he could see his half sister, Anna, and Aunt Louise seated facing the horses, with Cousin Jessica squeezed between them. Opposite them sat Avery, Duke of Netherby, and Gabriel, Earl of Lyndale.
Brown, whose best butler’s uniform was now explained, was opening the door of the first carriage and setting down the steps when Harry turned his attention back to it.
What a damnable time to discover that the whole of the Westcott family was in the process of descending upon him. For Harry did not doubt they were all coming. Already a third carriage was rolling into sight.
And a fourth.
Of course they were coming to him.
He had refused to go to them, after all.
Fourteen
Lydia closed all the curtains in her house, washed up Snowball’s paw prints as well as Snowball herself, cleaned the house from top to bottom, and baked a batch of biscuits for which she had no appetite whatsoever.
She cast on stitches for her pink shawl, knitted two rows, and then lost all her stitches after they had stuck on the needle and she jerked them toward the tip and they all came rushing off. She had been knitting too tightly. She picked up the stitches, knitted a row to make sure everything was as it ought to be, and stuffed the work into her bag. She got to her feet to poke the fire, saw there was no fire because she had not lit one, and sat down on the sofa with a book. She read a whole paragraph before slamming the book shut and tossing it aside. She let Snowball out into the back garden and stood just inside the doorway, glancing furtively around to check for heads popping up above the fence and listening for rustlings in the copse. She shut the door firmly after Snowball came trotting back inside.