Ned laughed. “It would be! Like Tom, the stables come first with her. Not a better rider in the county than Pamela.” He grinned. “Did she tell you there’s a jingle for the headstones there?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Well, you know how schoolchildren try to keep straight the confusing line of French kings?”
“Yes, I do,” laughed Constance, picking at random: “Louis the Pious, Louis the Bearded, Louis the Sluggard, Louis the Fat, Louis from over the Sea!”
“For the Archers there’s a jingle too. It goes—beginning with the present squire’s grandfather: Alger the Strong—because old Alger once lifted the back end of a loaded wagon out of the mire when a team of horses couldn’t pull it out. Alfred the Long—that was the Squire’s father, who towered over everyone. Richard the Pate—the Squire’s uncle, who went bald at twenty. Brandon the Late—the Squire’s brother, who was never known to be on time for anything. Virginia the Inquisitor—she was Pamela’s mother and she was always asking questions. And Margaret the Visitor—she was the Squire’s younger sister, who died in Bath.”
“Why,” asked Constance, “did they call her ‘Margaret the Visitor’?”
“Because she was never at home—at least after Tony left. You should see Warwood in the snow, Constance. It’s beautiful.”
“I know it would be,” she murmured. “All those lovely ash trees.”
She thought of Warwood—Tony’s home—as it would look frosted by snow. The long approach through an avenue of stately ash trees, set wide apart like meadow trees so that the full sweep of their graceful branching arms could be seen. She had been to Warwood but once, arriving in a carriage last fall when the Squire paid a call on a distant neighbor and took the girls along, but she remembered the ash trees’ pale gray trunks and pale gray branches. It had seemed to her, fancifully, that she was riding down a double column of Roman pillars, the white marble grayed by time and a leafy bower added overhead. In spring, Pamela had told her, large clusters of flowers would droop from the sides of those branches. Big lance-shaped leaves would follow and the horses would nibble them—Angel found them delicious!
Ned seized on her mention of the ash trees. “Did you know that portions of our barns were built of young ash timber from the estate? Finest wood for beams you can get—ash timber will bear a greater strain than any other wood.”
“No,” said Constance absently, her mind still picturing beautiful Warwood, which had once been an abbey. Looking as if it had been built around a huge square crenellated medieval keep, the great stone house rose loftily, a strange combination of church architecture and country gentleman’s home. Some of the windows had a gothic tracery of stone lace such as she remembered at Fountains Abbey, while the newer ones were mullioned and transomed like those at Axeleigh. She remembered suddenly that cook (whose oldest sister worked in the kitchens at Warwood) had told her of an ancient curse that was put on future owners of the abbey by the departing monks. “O’ course it only hurts the Warburtons and not them as works there,” cook had shrugged. Now that curse flitted unbidden through Constance’s mind: If brothers live here, one will not survive...for they will be as Cain and Abel. So had the abbot cursed the place as he walked away from it in 1539.
But surely, surely it was not true!
She told herself that Warwood’s big echoing rooms lent themselves to such stories. The house had a strange, half-forlorn, half-formidable air—a flavor all its own, rising four stories to its eaves and six stories in its massive and somehow forbidding square tower. Indomitable it rose above the countryside, a determined house—fit abode for the dangerous Captain Warburton.
“I did not know ash timber was so valued,” she said hastily, for Ned was looking at her.
“Oh, indeed! In ancient times the Anglo-Saxons used ashwood for their spear shafts. That was how the place came to be called Warwood originally—because it had produced so many of those ancient spears!”
Ancient spears had little interest for her today.
“I hope Captain Warburton made it home safely through the snow yesterday,” she said—a bit stiffly for Ned was leaning so close it made her treacherous heart skip a beat. A pigeon, flying back to its dovecote, swooped by and her gaze followed it up into the winter sky—a gunmetal sky, exactly the color of Tony Warburton’s eyes.
“Oh, Tony always makes it back all right,” said Ned with an airy shrug. “No need to worry about him.”
“But his horse could have gone lame,” pointed out Constance, nettled. “Any number of things could have happened to him!”
“Not to Tony—he always gets through. If I’d ridden out into the snow yesterday, would you have worried about me?” he asked teasingly.
“But you’d only have been riding as far as Huntlands, where you were staying! And besides, you’d have had Tom with you.”
“Oh, so Tom’s to protect me, eh?” Ned’s brows shot up. “I can look after myself, thank you!”
Amused at his chagrin, she laughed. “I’ve seen blizzards in Yorkshire that would daunt the bravest!”
“Was it in Yorkshire that you got your political views?” wondered Ned. “For they don’t sound much like London.” No, her views didn’t sound like aristocratic London’s.... “Look out,” he said, taking her by the arm. “Puss is coming through. He may overset you!”
As he spoke, Puss dashed past them, his cobby body and short legs taking powerful leaps through the snow. Whatever he was pursuing had vanished into the thick box hedge and after it went Puss in a flash of brindled copper, only his fluffy ringed tail remaining in view for a while as he struggled through the boxwood.
But taking hold of her had sent showers of sparks zinging through Ned.
“Marry me, Constance!” he muttered hoarsely, and before she could frame an answer, he seized her and drew her to him with a force that lifted her pattens from the snow. She struggled indignantly at first, and then with her soft breasts crushed against his hard chest, her own hot nature triumphed treacherously and she seemed to melt in his arms. Exhilarated as he had never been before, Ned felt her soft mouth part beneath the eager assault of his kisses, felt her slender body tremble in his arms—and then she was returning his kiss with a turbulence that seemed to overpower her slight frame. Her velvet arms went around his neck, her kidskin gloves entwined themselves in his shoulder-length hair, her fur muff was tickling his ear, he could feel the tingling urgency that was surging through her.
Elated by this surprising turn of events—for he had at best hoped to be pushed away halfheartedly—Ned held on to his lady. Until with a gasp and a violent wrench she twisted away from him.
Her face was very white, her eyes enormous and dark. For an unguarded moment there she had lost control and surrendered herself to wild abandon. She had let her eyelids flutter shut so that her lashes were dark wings against her cheeks as her soft mouth tingled under Ned’s kisses but—it was Tony Warburton she kissed. And now, looking up into Ned’s face, the shame of that burnt through her—that her treacherous body could respond to Ned when in reality her mind and thought and heart were all centered on his absent brother.
“How dare you take such liberties!” she cried, choked with anger not so much at the mystified young man standing before her in his scarlet coat, but at herself. And as she spoke, in a reflexive gesture of refusal she swung the velvet arm that had so recently twined about his neck so that her gloved hand cracked across his cheek.
Ned took the blow unflinching. He never moved as a red weal slowly grew across his suddenly paler face. Only his dark gray eyes were watchful, uneasy, mirroring the alarm he felt. For the lady blew hot and cold, as he’d complained to Tom. One time her smile would seem to beckon, luring him on—another time her violet eyes frosted over in rebuff.
But how was he to know how much that brief contact with a man’s strong body had shaken her? It had been so long, so long.... And she was young and her blood was a red fire in her veins. How was he to know that for one reckless m
oment she had forgotten the past, forgotten vows spoken in Essex, forgotten honor. How close she had been to saying “Yes!” and by that one short word assuring that she would spend her life at Warwood where Tony Warburton’s booted feet strode in and out! Oh, it was a shameful thought that had swirled through her mind and it had rocked her to her foundations...to consider marrying one man so that she might be near another!
And her reaction, her revulsion from what she had so nearly done to him—for Ned deserved better—had given added strength to the blow that had left that red mark across his white face.
But the gentleman from Warwood was not finished with her yet. His hands shot out and roughly pinioned her shoulders even as she reeled away from him. She could feel his fingers digging through the velvet of her cloak in a grip she could not unloose.
“Admit you love me!” he cried, almost in panic. “Stop fighting me, Constance. You do love me—your kiss told me that just now!”
“I don’t love you,” she said unsteadily, for there for a moment those eyes had looked at her like Tony’s and even being held at arm’s length was too close. Her senses reeled. Ever since the Midsummer Masque at Huntlands last summer when she had first met Tony Warburton, she had known he was right for her—and she was right for him. And it could never be! “I don’t love you!” she almost shouted. “I don’t!”
Ned’s strong fingers eased their grip. “I’m not giving up, you know,” he warned her.
“Well, you should! Your brother has already asked the Squire and he said the decision was up to me. He won’t force me to marry you!”
A deeper pallor came over Ned’s already pale countenance and the red weal seemed to darken. Abruptly he released her. “I should hate to think you were ‘forced’ into marriage with me,” he said slowly. He stood regarding her steadily, and his gray gaze seemed to burn into her like hot ashes. She stood her ground with lifted chin, giving him back her defiance. Then, “I’ll be back when you’re in better temper,” he said shortly and spun on his heel, tramping off through the snow. At the end of the maze aisle, where he would turn a corner and be lost from view, he turned and flashed a cold smile at her. “You need not worry about me,” he called softly. “We Warburtons can always find our way home—in the snow or otherwise!”
Constance stared at him stonily. But when he was gone she covered her face with her hands and her shoulders rocked with agony. What was she doing to herself, to him? That she should so mislead him as to where her true feelings lay—she who had been so careful to dissemble, to be cold, distant, reserved, where Tony Warburton was concerned. And now she had led his brother to believe that he was the one for whom she burned, and he would be back as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow. She found herself shaking—and not from cold.
From one of the tall mullioned windows on the second floor that overlooked the gardens, Clifford Archer, looking out to gauge the depth of the snow and consider whether his horse could make it to Cheddar over the rutted roads, observed this little pantomime with unconcealed wonder. The girl had gone into Ned’s arms willingly enough so far as he could judge, she had flung her arms around Ned’s neck—and then she had torn away and struck him. A hard blow. The Squire shook his head in puzzlement. Was this the new flirtatiousness, he wondered, to blow hot and blow cold at such a rapid pace? If so, he was well out of the courting game, for he’d not have understood the rules!
Chapter 6
Ned strode up to the stamped-down area of snow where Tom was just “taking” Pamela’s snow fort. He stood surveying the merry pair for a moment, observing Pamela in her enveloping scarlet cloak with a snowball poised in her hand and devilment in her merry crystal blue eyes. He waited while she launched her snowball and Tom ducked and then suddenly ran forward and seized a heavy oak branch over her head and half buried his laughing lady in a great fall of snow.
Pamela came up out of the snowfall with Tom brushing her off in time to hear the last of Ned’s remark: “—so if I'm to reach Warwood before nightfall with the roads buried this deep in snow. I’d best be starting.”
“But you can’t leave before breakfast!” cried Pamela. She was shaking the snow from her hair and trying vainly to get at those frozen bits which were melting down her neck.
“Sorry. Expected home. Things to do.” Ned made a courteous leg that almost dusted his plumed hat with snowflakes. “Make my regrets to the Squire, won’t you?”
By now they had both noted the red weal across Ned’s rather set face, and Tom offered hastily to ride with him a ways. “Say our good-bys for us, won’t you, Pam? We’ll breakfast at Huntlands.” He set off beside Ned toward the stables.
A moment later Constance ran from the maze with her velvet skirts held up, hurrying toward the house. Pamela, thinking how Constance’s slap—for that mark on Ned’s face must surely have come from a blow—had ruined her day with Tom, hoped sincerely that every branch Constance passed under would shower her with snow.
None did. She watched Constance run lightly into the house and marched in to find her bent over, removing her pattens in the hall.
“What did you do to Ned?” she demanded, throwing off her red cloak and shaking it as she stamped snow from her boots. “He dashed off saying he had to get back to Warwood.”
“Maybe he did,” countered Constance coolly, straightening up. “There’s snow all over you, Pamela! What did you do, take a header into a snowbank while you flung snowballs at Tom?”
“Almost! Tom showered snow on me by shaking a tree branch over my head.”
They were like heedless children, Tom and Pamela, thought Constance. And at that moment she would have given anything to be like them.
She remembered snowy times from her own childhood. Frost fairs on the frozen Thames when their fortunes were better and the money not all spent. Vendors’ and hawkers’ stalls upon the ice, sleds and laughing skaters whirling over it—and even horses, some drawing carriages carrying ladies and gentlemen in plumed hats and fur-trimmed cloaks.
In a white fur hat and muff and a wide-skirted little dress of purple velvet, little Constance had essayed to skate for the first time on double-bladed skates. And then her father, an accomplished skater from the North Country, had picked her up and placed her on his shoulder and winged with her across the ice while her mother, no skater at all, laughed and clapped her gloved hands from the shore. And then he had come back and set Constance down on the snowy bank and swept her mother up, holding her slenderness like a rag doll clasped to his lean body, and with her feet never touching the ice had executed an intricate ice dance that had caused feet to tap and heads to bob and hands to clap in pleasure. And after that they all sat around a bonfire and ate sweetmeats and little hot sausages and drank a scalding liquid her mother had told her with a laugh was chocolate.
She had loved snow then.
But gradually the money had run out, and life had lost its joy. Constance remembered how cold their lodgings were in winter when they could not afford enough sea coal to warm them, how cramped and hot in summer. She remembered days when they ate but little—and days when they ate not at all. She remembered how anxiously her mother’s clever fingers had mended every rent and tear in their precious clothing, for new ones were not to be had. The distant cousin in Norfolk died, and little by little the pittance that kept them alive (through the sale of the last of her mother’s little trinkets) dissolved away and they were forced at last to make what little Constance called in her own excited mind The Great Decision—to go north and throw themselves on the mercy of Hammond Dacey’s father at Claxton House in Yorkshire’s West Riding.
Constance had secretly wondered why they did not do so long before, for her father was always spinning her stories of his boyhood in the West Riding. He told her that Yorkshire was the largest county in England, so large that it had been divided into “thryddings,” or thirds, and that the West Riding alone was so large as to be second in size among English counties! He took her upon his knee and told her how it had always bee
n a divided country, the West Riding—divided in the Wars of the Roses, and, later, in the Civil War the east hewed to the king but the western part was for Parliament. The child didn’t understand these things but she thrilled to his stories about Mother Shipton, the witch who was conceived of the devil and born in a cave among terrible rocks and died three years before the young Elizabeth became queen. Mother Shipton had predicted the end of the world, that men would fly in strange machines, and that a vast horde of gold would be discovered in a frozen land in the far north across the ocean sea. The child listened raptly as he told her of the eerie Dropping Well near Mother Shipton’s cave, where water fell from a rocky ledge and slowly petrified everything dropped into it, and how in the limestone areas south of her cave wild orchids grew, one of them—the dark red helleborine—as dark a red as her father’s worn mended coat. He told her of pools in the Vale of York where he had watched great flights of teal and widgeon and tufted ducks and swans as lovely as any they had seen on their one short excursion up the Thames.
He told her—and his voice softened and had a wistful twang to it—what life had been like for him as a boy in Claxton House when his mother—Elizabeth, the first Lady Dacey—was alive. Warm, lovely lady that she was, she had taken him with her on long rides and they had galloped laughing across the wild high-heathered moors.
“You’ll tire the child,” Constance’s mother had told him, smiling wanly as she listened. Anne Cheltenham as a young girl had been sought after and feted; her world had spread out before her like a bright carpet of flowers wherever she chose to tread—and one by one those flowers had been snatched away until she stood, it seemed, knee deep in thorns with nowhere to turn. Sometimes she combed Constance’s cloud of dark hair with a wooden comb (the filigreed silver comb had long since been sold) and told her gently of her own girlhood in London, and how the fountains had run wine when Charles II was restored to his throne and all of London took one long mad holiday. She made it all sound very lovely and there was a catch in her soft musical voice as she spoke.
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