“And then you went to your father’s people in Yorkshire? Claxton House, I think you said?”
“Near Ripon in the West Riding,” Constance heard herself say.
“What was it like?”
It was a house of hatred. I thought to die there. Aloud, she said, “Oh, it was much as any other manor house, nothing remarkable.”
“Like Axeleigh?”
“No, nothing like.” How could she describe that stone pile of a house to Pamela and not communicate the despair she had felt at living there? How every night she had wished herself gone? She shivered. “It’s getting very cold and I can’t control this hat. Every time I move my arm. I’m near to losing it—and the wind is taking my hair. Let’s go back.”
“All right. It is getting awfully cold.” Pamela wheeled her horse about. “I think when I marry I will wear a gold satin petticoat to match my hair,” she declared suddenly, wrinkling her nose. “And have an overgown of cloth of gold to astound the county!” She laughed. “What do you think of that, Constance?”
“I think that will be—very nice with your yellow hair.” There was a slight catch in Constance’s voice. She had worn her dark hair combed down long and floating over her shoulders like some country dairymaid. Her wedding gown had been a faded lavender linen kirtle with a separate white bodice, low cut and with full three-quarter sleeves. And the wedding circlet she had worn upon her head was not the elegant arrangement of pearls and golden leaves that carefree Pamela would undoubtedly wear, but a simple wreath of daisies twined about her inky locks.
She had not cared. She had been happy that day. Happier those first weeks she had spent with her tall bridegroom than she had ever been before—or since for that matter.
Now he was gone. She had not seen him all these months past. She supposed she would never see him again. She was seventeen and no one knew about her secret marriage.
Axeleigh Hall, Somerset,
December 22, 1684
CHAPTER 2
Constance was still brooding as she rode beside Pamela down Axeleigh’s long oak-lined driveway. Indeed they were almost blown down it by a ripping wind that whipped the branches overhead and kept them hard-pressed to keep their velvet skirts from flying over their heads. She lifted her eyes to the house—big and substantial, built of rough courses of Ham stone back in the Old Queen’s time. Its long front rose three stories high to four tall gables and its stone-tiled roofs were surmounted by towering clusters of chimneys through which fragrant wood smoke was even now smudging the winter-gray sky. Huge airy mullioned and transomed windows made it light and bright.
Their approach was observed by a tall commanding gentleman somberly garbed in black and silver who stood before the drawing room window with a glass of port in his hand. He was Ned Warburton’s brother. Captain Anthony Warburton, and he had made the long cold ride from Warwood, the ancient seat of the Warburtons in Somerset, to press his younger brother’s suit for Constance’s hand in marriage.
The Squire of Axeleigh, a vigorous sandy-haired man with a deep chest and keen blue eyes, was leaning against the carved overmantel. He had listened quietly to his friend, but in truth he was not paying much attention. He was studying in rather melancholy fashion the tall earnest Captain, who strode restlessly about, emphasizing his remarks with vigorous gestures. Tony Warburton had always had a nice sense of style, thought the Squire, whose own clothes never quite seemed to fit his strong body. Over the rich baritone flow of the Captain’s words he noted the crisp cut of his guest’s black velvet coat, wide-cuffed, deep-reversed, full-skirted and strikingly trimmed in silver braid and silver buttons. That coat’s full skirts were slit from hem to waist in the back to facilitate riding—and riding was to the lean Captain second nature; the coat was slit up both sides to permit hasty withdrawal of the serviceable basket-hilted sword that peeked out from the gray satin lining as Captain Warburton roved about the room, his tall figure in dark trousers and riding boots moving with the lithe grace that proclaimed him the swordsman he was.
“And since I’ve no wife nor any intention of gaining one,” Captain Warburton turned to fix the Squire with a pair of steady gunmetal eyes beneath straight dark brows, “that means Ned will inherit Warwood when I’m gone.”
“Aye, ’tis a good point you make, Tony,” agreed the Squire, mentally approving the fact that Tony Warburton, despite all those years away fighting foreign wars, still chose—like himself—to wear his own hair instead of one of those barbarous wigs which had become so fashionable. Indeed the Captain’s hair made a very substantial showing of its own, for it was thick and straight and heavy and of so dark and rich a brown that to the casual observer it appeared black, although in sunlight it flashed a rich russet. It hung like a thick skein of gleaming silk to the Captain’s broad shoulders.
Captain Warburton, frowning slightly that throwing the bait of Warwood into the conversation had not produced more enthusiasm, took another turn around the room and his saturnine face grew thoughtful. What would win the day for Ned? The boy was half out of his mind with love of the wench Constance! Mooning about, dancing attendance on her—and all apparently for naught.
The tall Captain lifted his glass of port and studied its fiery red color against the light. The gesture caused the lace that spilled from the cuffs of his full-sleeved white linen shirt to fall back over a pair of fine strong hands made for gripping a sword—or a woman.
“Ned would not ask ye for a dowry,” he said, picking his words carefully. “In case the girl has little substance behind her?” It was thrown out experimentally, should that be the stumbling block.
The Squire of Axeleigh flushed. “Constance will have a handsome dowry,” he said stiffly. “Provided by me.”
“Ah, I’d thought as much,” sighed the Captain, running long fingers through his dark hair. Another thrust gone wrong. He had been recounting Ned’s good points now for a full fifteen minutes, and it was beginning to weary him. He downed his drink, perplexed.
The Squire gave him a sympathetic look. He was much accustomed to giving sympathy to suitors, for there had been many of late. But he and the Captain were friends of old—indeed he had once expected Tony Warburton to become his brother-in-law in the old days when, snared by her beauty (Tony had always had a great appreciation of female beauty), Tony had become betrothed to the Squire’s younger sister, Margaret. They had made a handsome pair, he thought wistfully, tall regal flame-haired Margaret swaying gracefully beside her genial dark lover with his quick flashing smile and his arrogant military bearing. And the Squire had not held it against Tony Warburton at all when, on learning of Margaret’s death, he had plunged—not into drink, which everyone felt would have been perfectly natural—but into the arms of that flighty little Weatherby girl, so frail she had perished a short two months after the wedding.
The blow of her death had seemed to shake Tony Warburton at last, and he had gone into a long period of grieving and restless nights during which, his housekeeper had reported in a scandalized whisper to all who would listen, in his sleep he had called out brokenly for Margaret as if the frail little Weatherby girl had never been. Clifford Archer, hearing of it, had felt he understood. Margaret’s death had been such a massive blow to Tony that he had reeled from it into a marriage of convenience with a girl whose love he had not really returned. Her loss had triggered him back into reality, and grief for the girl he had really loved—and lost.
Since then the Captain, once he had got through the initial shock, had become as determined a widower as the Squire and had eventually managed to discourage even the most determined matchmakers. Both men would have been pleased had Ned showed an interest in Pamela, but he did not.
Not so with Constance! When Constance had arrived on the scene last summer, young Ned had noticed her immediately. And ever since had haunted her whereabouts.
And Ned’s older brother at their womanless establishment at Warwood, having met the lass, approved the chase, thought the Squire wryly. For slend
er Constance passed like a bright shimmer before men’s eyes, and the dark splendor of her glance brought a quickening of the heart, a vision of what might be, to even the dullest laggard.
It would have surprised the Squire to know that what most captivated Captain Warburton (although he took great pains not to show it) was her voice—that soft husky murmur like the rustle of taffeta petticoats, melting into sounds so soft they might have been the brushing of fine silk. Margaret had had a voice like that and its tones had rubbed his nerves raw with desire. No wonder Ned felt as he did about the girl, the Captain thought with sympathy.
And so he had gone this day to Axeleigh to arrange the match.
The Squire, good host as always, had heard his friend out. He had pressed on his lean guest more port.
“ ’Tis rumored ye’ll be going back overseas soon to fight in some other foreign war ye’ve no business in,” he told the Captain bluntly. “Is it true?”
The Captain’s dark intent face, with the long white scar on his cheek that lent itself to sinister imaginings, relaxed for a moment. “ ’Tis false,” he asserted. “I’m staying here until I get Ned’s affairs settled. So can we strike a bargain on it, Clifford?”
The Squire fingered his empty glass and bethought him of a letter he had received only this morning, one of a string of letters, all saying the same thing. “Tony,” he sighed, and, having said it, could not believe that the words had escaped his lips. “I had rather you brought your own suit, for the girl does not seem to favor Ned.”
For once Captain Warburton was completely floored. If the winter sky had opened up and rained down apple blossoms, he could not have been more astonished.
“Did I hear ye aright?” he demanded and his voice was stern.
The Squire brushed a hand over his forehead and wondered what madness had inspired him finally to say the words that had been quivering on his lips for months. “ ’Tis just that I’ve seen a certain light in your eyes when you look at her, Tony, and I just thought—”
“That I’d brush Ned aside and take her for myself? Ah, that’s not worthy of you, Clifford.”
“ ’Tis just that she seems to have no special liking for Ned,” pointed out the Squire weakly.
Captain Warburton pounced on that. “Ned tells me she blows hot and she blows cold, he knows not where he stands with her. That was why I came—to clear the air.”
The Squire heaved a gusty sigh. “Young girls are inclined to be missish. I’ll not pretend I understand them, Tony.”
Captain Warburton swung away from him and his hard gray gaze swept round the long drawing room with its cross-legged chairs and handsome Holbein carpet, richly colored and full of angular arabesques, which the Squire called a “Turkey” carpet because, although made in England, it was hand-knotted in the Turkish manner. His gaze passed over the apricot damask drapes. Margaret had chosen those drapes herself in Taunton, he remembered, possibly because they went so well with her own coloring, and taken the fabric home to Axeleigh, where the Squire’s wife had not approved them. But in one of the “minor triumphs” that Margaret laughed about, they had gone up anyway.
Behind those drapes he and Margaret had stolen kisses, he had felt her thigh pressed softly against his, her warm sweet breath on his cheeks, breathed the scent of lilies of the valley that always seemed to permeate her flame-red hair. Behind those drapes he had felt his body grow fevered and had to hold himself in check and remind himself that Margaret was young and innocent and not to be taken like one of the casual women of whom he had known so many.
He passed his hand rapidly over his eyes. God, this room held memories for him—all of Axeleigh did for that matter. Which was in the main why he managed to stay away from it, despite his long-standing friendship with Clifford Archer.
It was in this very room that he, having a drink by that fireplace against which Clifford was now leaning, had first laid eyes on Margaret, home only the day before from boarding school. A tall fourteen she had been, but already a woman, as anyone could see from the straining of her silken bodice and the enchantingly wild look in her vivid dark-lashed emerald eyes. She had come dashing into the room, where the two men were talking, with schoolgirl abandon, her burnt orange silk skirts fluttering and her wild flame-colored hair in charming disarray, waving two parts of a broken comb.
“Clifford, I have broken my comb again on this unmanageable hair—” she began. And stopped at sight of her older brother’s debonair guest. “I am sorry, I did not know you had company.” Her voice had the rustling quality of tall grass brushing sensuously, a voice that subconsciously tore at the senses. Tony Warburton had felt that voice play music all along his spine and he had stared at Margaret as if he had never seen a woman before.
Clifford hastened to present his “little sister, back home at last” and Tony had made her a leg, bowing as elegantly as he knew how. Margaret’s smile had flashed with a winsome sparkle of white teeth and she had dropped him a delightful curtsy, learnt at school.
Tony had come back the next day bringing a gift of a handsome repousse silver comb—and his heart as well, although he had hoped that was not so obvious.
His restless gaze moved past the drapes to the green brocade sofa at one end of the long light room. It was before that very sofa, poised gracefully on bended knee, that he had asked fifteen-year-old Margaret to marry him. He had just brought her home from a ball at Huntlands and she was wearing her ball gown, of tawny peach satin with an enormous spill of lace at the elbows and a neckline cut so low that a man could bury his face in it and feel the soft warm pulsing of her pearly white breasts.
Margaret had stared at him for a full minute with her green eyes luminous.
She had said yes. ...
Captain Warburton yanked himself back to the present. He had come here on behalf of Ned. For Constance. “I’m not in the running, Clifford.” He could be as blunt as the Squire when the occasion arose. “But what of Ned?”
“I’ll have to sound the girl out, Tony.” Smoothly his host turned the conversation down another line, speculating on the state of the King’s health, which was reputed to be worsening. Not surprising, they agreed, for surely some seventeen acknowledged mistresses plus a host of other less durable affairs of the heart would wear out even an iron constitution such as the King’s! They touched uneasily on the growing unrest and frowned over the fact that the French King Louis XIV was advancing Charles money to keep him going—money that had enabled Charles to disband Parliament.
“That’s the worst,” declared the Squire gloomily. “A king of England bought and paid for by France—it galls me, damme, it does!”
Captain Warburton’s answering nod was grim. It galled him too—and he knew rather more about the situation than his host. Indeed the discovery of the deal Charles had made with the French king had been for the Captain a disillusioning experience.
“And revoking town charters good these hundreds of years so that he can confer offices on his favorites,” grumbled the Squire. His big head gave a shake. “And his brother James next in succession to the throne and James an avowed Catholic! It would be terrible to see the days of the burnings come back like the times of Bloody Mary when a man could smell Protestant flesh burning all across the countryside!”
Captain Warburton nodded, for in politics he was a moderate man, like his host. But even in the midst of such sober thoughts, the cynical Captain had a lancing wit. It flashed now.
“So far Charles has managed to anger the Catholics almost as much as the Dissenters,” he pointed out with a grin. “A man who irritates everyone can’t be all bad!”
But his host was not to be cajoled into mirth. “James is worse than Charles,” he grumbled.
But it was the Captain who coolly stated what they both were thinking. “It is rumored that if James gains the throne, the West Country will rise against him.”
“I hope not.” The Squire was disturbed. “In time we can surely work things out, if rash young fools don’t dash ab
out shooting off guns!”
At the mention of rash young fools, Captain Warburton resumed his pacing, for he had no doubt as to which rash young fool his old friend referred: Ned. This interest in politics had risen recently in Ned, who had never before shown the slightest interest. The Captain listened as the Squire muttered, “We’ll need wise heads and a tight rein on our tempers if James comes to the throne.” He broke off. “I see the girls are back from their ride. They chose a cold day for it—as did you!”
The Captain turned toward the tall windows that overlooked the long driveway. Through their panes he had a view of the two girls, laughing as they clutched their plumed hats, who rode toward him beneath the wind-whipped branches of the old gnarled oaks. They made a pretty picture with their hair and their velvet skirts flying and the Captain was prompted to exclaim enviously, “You’re a lucky man, Clifford, to have so much beauty in your house. Faith, you live in a veritable flower garden!”
“You sound as flowery as old Scoresby,” said the Squire dryly. “Dead now, God rest his soul.”
Tony Warburton laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, rather deep and low in his throat. “I remember at the Hamiltons’ ball this fall Old Scoresby, tipsy and tottering on his feet, proposed a toast to their eyelashes. Called them the Daffodil and the Iris.” He stopped abruptly, remembering that that same Old Scoresby had once called flame-haired Margaret the Tiger Lily.
The Squire joined him at the window and they stood watching the girls dismount in the wild weather, laughing as they clutched at their blowing skirts, calling out merrily for grooms to take their horses to the stables and rub them down.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 3