Lord Haven's Deception

by Donna Lea Simpson

  But the moment she told Mary the truth, that she was Miss Jane Dresden and that she was—practically—the betrothed of the hard and haughty Lord Haven, the woman, whomever she was, would have no choice but to send for her aunt, Lady Mortimer, and she would have to go on to Haven Court. She didn’t know exactly where she had wandered in the dark and frigid night, but it could not be so far away that the woman who owned this cottage would not have heard of Lord Haven and his resentful temper.

  Jane turned onto her side and stared over at the faintly glowing fire. Embers popped and fell in a shower to the floor of the grate and Mary moved restlessly. Jane just could not go to the viscount’s home now. She had fled into the night to avoid that fate, a loveless marriage; she considered the agreement she had made to seriously consider Lord Haven as a groom to be irrevocably broken, torn asunder by the treachery of some of the participants. Things were different now and she must decide what she was going to do now that she had been cut adrift from her old life, partly by that treachery and partly by her own precipitate actions.

  With any luck she was many miles away from Haven Court, though she thought she might have lost her way in the darkness. She shivered as the memory of that long night of wandering, scared, cold, lost and wet, came back to her. How lucky she was to have wandered here, into the safety of this snug heaven. But what was she going to do? Where was she going to go now that her life was in a state of turmoil?

  Would it hurt, an insidiously meek voice said in her head, to just be “Jenny” for a few days, until you get your bearings and figure out what you want to do? You told her your name was Jenny, the voice whispered, just keep being Jenny, runaway maid, perhaps, or turned-off lady’s maid.

  She laid back and stared at the rafters and into the mysterious darkness above. She could hear the wind sough outside the window, and the panes rattled in their frame. It seemed to her that she was some distance away from any habitation, for she had wandered long and far. But she could not be certain. For all she knew she could be just the other side of the river from Lesleydale! She would have to find out from her hostess. Much depended on that, for if this woman heard in the village about the missing Miss Dresden—there must, by now, be a stir about her disappearance—then she would know immediately who her houseguest was.

  Jane felt some compunction about involving the widow Mary Cooper in her disappearance, but with a bit of luck she would be able to disappear again before the woman was too deeply involved. As for herself, she felt no guilt at all about the way she had left the inn. She was in Yorkshire under protest and now she did not think she owed anyone anything, least of all the hideous Lord Haven, as he had become in her imaginative brain.

  Not without reason. In her own secret investigation of this man she was being matched with she had spoken with one lady who had met Lord Haven in London, many years before. She remembered him well as a graceless, bumbling, plain, dour, mean-tempered oaf with no intelligence and even less conversation. Others Jane had spoken with were marginally more polite—they called him stern, unyielding, practical, quiet—but it all supported the image of the viscount as dour and humorless. And that was who she was to marry?

  Squeezing the pillow, agitated, Jane tried to relax, but bitterness at her ordeal overwhelmed her. Oh, but no, her aunt and mother had said; she was to make up her own mind. If she didn’t want to marry him, why, she could just walk away and go live in her little cottage, just her and her mother. That had been her understanding, the only reason she had reluctantly agreed to this trip.

  Hah! It had become plain on the journey north that her aunt had no intention of living up to her end of the bargain, as Jane had understood it in Bath. It had become increasingly clear that she would be bullied and harried into it, and not just by Lady Mortimer but by the viscount, too lazy and proud to seek his own wife in London, and by his mother, whom Lady Mortimer knew from her own long-ago London Seasons and whom she described, in terms Jane could not like, as someone very like herself.

  Jane would marry Haven, she had been informed, or Lady Mortimer would know the reason why.

  It was her worst nightmare; Jane would be immured in this harsh, desolate, sheep-filled country with a miserable husband and likely a dozen babies in as many years. It was not that she did not want children; she did, desperately, but not at the price of being bedded by a humorless, emotionless giant of a man in a cold, dreary castle in the farthest reaches of England.

  Mary murmured in her sleep; Jane watched her hostess shift restlessly in her uncomfortable slumber and thought about her current situation. It was a series of unfortunate happenings that had resulted in her precipitous flight from the inn. She had been unhappy coming up to Yorkshire, yes, but she could have withstood all of her aunt’s nagging, could have fortified herself with the knowledge that if she just held to her convictions she could ride out Lady Mortimer’s anger and that of Lady Haven, and return within the month to Bath and her mother’s side. But one letter had changed all of that rosy wishful thinking, that gauzy dream of a life of her own choosing.

  The fateful missive had caught up with them at the inn in Lesleydale; it had been posted from Bath only two days after their own departure. And now, with a few hastily scrawled words, all of her hope was dead; confused, unhappy, frightened, she had made her heedless plans and fled.

  Perhaps she would not have been so reckless as to run up into the moors alone—that had not been her plan—if she had not been accosted by those drunken louts in the stable yard, and had her dress torn, and . . . she hid her face in the pillow under her head. There was no avoiding the truth. She had made a mess of everything, losing even her meager reserve of money and her precious pearls in her idiotic flight. What was she going to do? Where could she go?

  Perhaps being “Jenny” for a few days would give her time to think. Claiming that name was an inspiration, for it really was hers, in a way. Her old Scottish nanny had called her that for all the years of her youth, and the name held fond associations. She had been Jenny to her own dear Nanny Biddy, and “Jenny” she could still answer to.

  All she needed was a little time. She had to decide what she was going to do now that she had broken away from her family. She felt not an ounce of compunction for the alarming note she had made up on the spur of the moment. If it frightened her aunt, then good! The wicked old harridan deserved it. But Jane did not, deep in her heart, think that her aunt would be frightened for her. Annoyed that her scheme was not going to come off as expected, perhaps, worried for the family’s reputation certainly, but not truly concerned for her niece’s well-being.

  As the dim light of morning filled the tiny cottage and the baby stirred, Jane, curled up under the warm woolen blanket, made her resolution. She would stay here for a few days with this kind-faced woman, Mary, and her adorable baby, in this delightful cottage in the Yorkshire hills, and then she would disappear again. She still had a little money tucked in her stocking. She would either travel on the stage back to Bath and confront her mother, or she would go up to Morag’s—Nanny Biddy’s niece and Jane’s old friend—home in Scotland. North or south; within the next few days she would decide literally on the direction of her life.

  Chapter Three

  Haven, having escaped from the Court and its pervasive atmosphere of blame, found refuge at the Tippling Swan and sat in a corner of the smoky, low-beamed drinking room of the inn. It was very late, past midnight or later, and yet all around him the raucous voices of men eddied and flowed like a muddy stream, swelling on the tide of a joke to a boozy wave of laughter. Joseph Barker, the innkeeper, brewed a dark lager that was the pride of the parish, and most of the men present gulped back great draughts from hammered metal tankards.

  As he scanned the crowd Haven wondered, was one of them a kidnapper, maybe worse? He cast his piercing blue gaze around, lingering on Burt Connor, Georgie Robertson, Artie Davies, each man in turn, but there was not a one of them he thought would descend to such depths as kidnapping a female. It just did not see
m possible that one of these men, or more perhaps, for abduction was rarely a solitary crime, had strayed so far from the law as to take an innocent girl of good birth for ransom, a demand that had not yet been followed up. The note had said a demand would follow, but so far, nothing.

  He motioned through the thick air for the landlord; Joseph Barker was a bulky, surly sort who gave him an unpleasant look but, grumbling, joined him. The man turned one of the sturdy wooden chairs around and straddled it, rolling his shirtsleeves up over meaty forearms.

  Haven leaned across the battered wooden table and said, “Are you certain, Joseph, that you neither saw nor heard anything the day Miss Dresden disappeared?”

  “I towd ya, me lord, I hain’t seen nuthin’.” Barker narrowed his eyes, squinting through the smoky air. “An’ I’d be beholden to ya if ya wouldna’ make like I did.”

  “I didn’t, Joseph. I am just trying to get to the bottom of this. She and her aunt were here, and then the girl disappeared. Do you remember Miss Dresden?” Haven raised his voice over another wave of laughter.

  With a leer, the landlord said, “Right enough, me lord. Never forget a pair like ’ers.”

  Haven frowned. What the hell did that mean? “But you never saw her come down?”

  “Not arter her an’ the auld besom, her auntie, went up t’stairs, nup.”

  “So you have no idea what happened to her? You saw no one suspicious, nor—”

  With a sigh of exasperation the landlord grunted, “Don’t rightly know, me lord, what I ken tell ya that I h’ain’t already tol’ ya!” His words were muttered with a belligerent tone. “An’ anutter thing, me lord. Yer makin’ the fellas a mite anxious, like, an’ . . .”

  Haven sighed deeply as he listened to Joseph’s unhappy reproaches. The landlord’s words held some merit. The viscount was being cast unpleasant looks in a place where he had been used to be honored. The men around Lesleydale might hold he had little to say for himself, but what little he did say was accounted to be sensible and just. Now, after his insistent questioning, they were grumbling that he was casting them all in a suspicious light. Not a man among them would stoop to snatching an innocent maiden, they muttered, and for the lord of the manor to be saying they would—

  In short, it was making for an unpleasant time. And yet what else could he do? Miss Dresden was in his part of the county and he felt a duty toward her, though she had disappeared before ever she got to his own door. Even if he did not feel that tug of responsibility, a young woman missing, in his parish? He was bound, by all his ties to the land and the people, to set this right. She had gone somewhere, for he had no belief in the supernatural. Flesh-and-blood women did not just disappear. “I know, Joseph,” he replied, cutting off the innkeeper’s litany of complaints. “But think—have you seen any strangers, even anyone who was vouched for by someone else?”

  The man frowned, scrubbing his scruffy chin and folding his meaty arms over the back of the chair. “Yuh ast me that afore, me lord. Carn’t say as I hev. I’ll ast the missus. Again. But seems ta me yer lookin’ in the wrong place. I don’t ’low that kind o’ foolishness at my inn, you know. P’raps at the Dog’s Hind Leg,” he said, naming an infamous hedge tavern on a back road.

  “But she disappeared from here, Joseph, we cannot get past that.”

  The landlord grunted and stood. “Don’t mean ’twere someone from here who done it! Could ha bin summat as follered her from London!” He turned and retreated to the bar, where a barmaid stood waiting for him to draw her a tankard of his dark and bitter brew.

  “Haven! How goes it, my friend?”

  Twisting in his seat, Haven was relieved to see Colin Varens, a local baronet who, though a few years younger than he, was a sensible man with a cool head. Sensible except that he was in love with Rachel and had been for four years. Haven thought the man could do much better than his contrary, flirtatious, impetuous sister. In fact, Haven suspected that Pamela, younger than her sister by three years, was well along in the way of being head over ears for the baronet, who was not accounted a handsome man, nor fashionable, but had an open countenance and pleasing expression. But Colin only ever saw Pammy as a child; her slight frame and boyish, slim figure made her look more thirteen than almost twenty, though her thoughts were often surprisingly deep and her spirit gallant.

  “Colin, good to see you. Didn’t expect to, this late of an evening.” Haven stuck out his hand and the two men shook.

  Varens turned the chair around and sat in the seat vacated by the innkeeper, frowning. “What is this nonsense I hear about someone being kidnapped from the Tippling Swan? My estate manager was full of some wild tale. I told him he was out of his mind, but he insisted.”

  “It is true, unfortunately,” Haven said. He glanced around and lowered his voice, for with the meeting of the two most prominent men of the parish the room had grown quieter, and there was an uneasy feel of resentment in the very air they breathed. It was damn uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do about it at this juncture. Once the mystery was solved things would return to their normal even tone.

  He explained about the disappearance of Miss Dresden, and the measures he had taken to recover the young lady. “I have searched my own property—most of it, anyway—and ridden over every back road I know of these past thirty-six hours or more. No one has seen her, nor anyone who could have kidnapped her.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and dug at his raw eyes. He was exhausted and would need some sleep soon. “It is a mystery and I am not overfond of mysteries, especially when they concern me or my family.”

  “And do you think everyone is telling you the truth?” Varens asked. He glanced around the room, and some of the men who had been staring at them with menacing expressions resumed their determined drinking. Varens was known to be handy with his fists and not above a fight with the yeoman class.

  “I have no reason to think otherwise,” Haven said. He stared at his younger friend, wondering if he was intimating that there was deception in their midst, and then glanced around the room, relieved to see that the men were now ignoring them. “What are you saying, Colin?”

  “Nothing, truly, Haven. I am just casting around for explanations. It all seems so . . . unlikely. Kidnapping, here? I have heard something you ought to know, though,” he said, his plain face set in a grim expression and his eyes serious. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if this has any bearing on your case, but my stable manager said that the other day, the very day you say this Miss Dresden disappeared, I believe, he was coming out of the back door of the Swan to relieve himself and he saw two men jostling with a barmaid or some such female. When he shouted, they let go of her and she ran off.”

  “She was a barmaid? How did your man know?”

  Varens shrugged. “I assume it was the way she was dressed. He said ‘barmaid,’ not ‘lady,’ so it must have been her clothing that led him to presume her status.”

  Haven shook his head. “I am not looking for a barmaid, Varens, though I thank you for the thought.” He was disappointed that after the buildup it should turn out to be something so mundane as a barmaid being roughly handled. That happened all too often. “Miss Dresden is a young lady of the gentry, Varens, granddaughter of an earl. She would hardly be mistaken for a barmaid.” He thought of the miniature he had seen of the lady, her face pinched, her expression haughty, and added, “No, most definitely Miss Dresden could not be mistaken for a barmaid. And, too, Lady Mortimer was very clear about her clothing. She was wearing a coach dress of brown sarcenet and a pelisse of the same fabric. And the situation is different, too. Miss Dresden was abducted; she would hardly be grappling with a drunkard in the stable yard.”

  “You’re right, of course,” the younger man said, leaning back in his chair, at his ease. The barmaid brought him a tankard of ale with a flirtatious swish of her skirts, but Varens did not seem to notice. He never had been in the petticoat line, saving all of his adoration for Rachel. “But I hat
e to think of any one of our neighboring men doing something so base as to kidnap a lady! How is your sister taking this?”

  Haven shook his head. Always, Sir Colin thought of everything in relation to how Rachel was faring. “My dear sister is made of sterner stuff than you would think, Varens.” He did not need to ask which sister his friend meant. Varens never considered Pamela unless he thought to buy her a sweetmeat in the village, or talk to her about horses. “But why do you not come over tomorrow and see for yourself?”

  Gloomily, Varens sighed. “I would, but Miss Neville would likely hide away in her room, as she has done the last three times that I have called.”

  “I can order her to come down and greet you,” Haven said, anger rising at Rachel’s obdurate refusal to see that Varens was eating his heart out for love of her. Why was it women did not know how to value an honest heart, even if it beat in the chest of a man with a homely face, but would rather see a dandy in canary overcoats and no heart to speak of? “But,” he said, forced to honesty, “she likely would not comply.”

  “I would not have her ordered to see me,” Varens said. There was an expression of ineffable sadness on his face. “I know you think me a fool, Haven, for my feelings—”

  Haven protested, but Varens put up one hand and continued speaking. “But I see something in her, something fine and noble and . . . I cannot explain. Someday, perhaps . . .” He fell silent for a moment, gloomily staring at the floor. “Why can women not be rational, like men?” he blurted out. “I do not understand them. Before she first went off to London, Miss Neville was very pleased to call me her friend, and I even thought there was a preference there, a . . . a softness. But ever since her first Season . . .” He broke off and stared through the smoke at the bar.