Tangled Destinies

by Bancroft, Blair

  I remained in the unique position of walking beside Anthony as we crossed a hundred yards or so of well-scythed grass and reached the edge of a promontory with a spectacular view of the rolling countryside beyond. And at our feet, Roman ruins that rivaled the view. Ruins that far exceeded my expectation. I confess it, I gaped. No wonder Lady Winterbourne considered today’s excursion the highlight of the entertainment planned for her guests.

  I listened, fascinated, as Anthony described the excavations on the left, lined by tightly fitted stones. These, it seemed, were the remains of a hypocaust—tunnels through which the Romans ran hot water to heat their houses. An elaborate bit of engineering, built at a time when the British isles were populated solely by warring tribes of semi-barbarians and soldiers of the Roman Empire who were trying to subdue them. Impressive, yet the hypocaust was nothing compared to the vision on our right.

  A temple, Anthony told us. It was perhaps twenty feet by thirty, every inch of the floor made of colorful mosaics in intricate patterns—among them, circles, stars, Roman gods in chariots, and all looking almost new, instead of patterns created some fifteen hundred years ago. “A great treasure,” Thornbury pronounced. “Found by the estate’s steward in the last century.”

  Indeed it was. Who, I wondered, had built a villa and a temple on this isolated site so far from the luxurious baths the Romans had constructed in Aquae Sulis, now known as Bath? The Roman general for the region? But would a military man spend the considerable sum the temple must have cost, in addition to the villa? Perhaps he did it for selfish purposes, hoping the gods would grant him reassignment to some less barbaric post. Or did this site once belong to someone exiled from Rome—the black sheep of a powerful family, banned for some heinous action?

  Speculation was delicious. I popped back to the present century, startled to discover I was alone. Except for Anthony. He looked at me and nodded. “You feel it, don’t you? The connection to the past.”

  “Without the Romans, our history would be quite different,” I returned.

  “Ah yes, if only they were here to build the roads of today,” Anthony pronounced with a perfectly straight face, though his eyes were twinkling. “Are you ready to join the fray?” he asked, offering his arm.

  “No,” I said with a sigh, “but I suppose I must.” I was about to link my arm with his when Lady Winterbourne demanded his attention, and soon he and the other gentlemen were peering down into the hypocaust, seemingly lost in a discussion of Roman engineering. I spent the remainder of the afternoon running hither and yon on an endless succession of nonsensical errands, from supervising the servants, who were doing quite well on their own, to inquiring after the comfort of each and every female guest. Did they need a parasol, a fan, a fresh pencil, a damp cloth to wipe their hands? Would they care for another biscuit or jam tart?

  At no time did Lady Winterbourne send me anywhere near the male members of the party. Therefore it should have come as no surprise when I heard her announce, as I was helping the servants pack up for the trip home, “Lady Ariana, I do believe you would enjoy a turn with Thornbury in his curricle. Miss Neville, you may take her place in the young ladies’ carriage.”

  Nonetheless, pain stabbed through me. I had so looked forward to those minutes alone with . . .

  Struggling to mask my bitter disappointment, I inclined my head in response and made my way to the carriage. Even as the ladies grumbled about Lady Winterbourne’s favoritism, their cool nods made it plain I was not forgiven for attracting more than my share of Lord Thornbury’s attention. With a show of meekness I was far from feeling, I sat on the squab with my back to the coachman and turned my gaze to the passing scenery. In truth, I was secretly enjoying the barbs that flew from the young ladies’ mouths as they dissected, with petulant subtlety, the absent Lady Ariana and her mother.

  Remarkable. Lady Pamela must have learned the skill of dissection at her mother’s knee. Fortunately, as far as I was concerned, the young ladies confined themselves to shunning. The journey home seemed far longer than the time I spent with Anthony in his curricle.

  I barely took time to put off my hat and swipe a damp cloth over my face and hands, before I was off to the nursery. A nod from the footman stationed in the corridor, and then I was greeted by Ivy’s broad smile. “Ah, miss, you’re back. Come in, come in. Our Nick’s been looking for you, I swear he has.”

  In my eagerness I burst through the door to the nursery’s main room, only to be brought up short by the imposing figure of Nurse Tompkins, standing between me and Nick’s cradle. We had met before, of course, and I approved her competence, even though I sensed she lacked the warmth I would have preferred in someone caring for a baby. Yet the gray streaks in her dark brown hair, as well as the lines on her face, indicated far more years of experience with babies than I could claim. I had, therefore, assumed an attitude of “wait and see.”

  She eyed me coldly. “Nicholas has just been put down after his feed, miss. I do not care to have his routine disturbed.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, and moved to go around her. Not the slightest bit intimidated by my haughty tone, she stepped to the side, blocking me once again.

  “Nurse Tompkins,” I said, the timbre of my voice turned to steel, “you will step aside this instant. We may be of equal rank as upper servants, but that baby is more mine than yours. I promised his mother I would look after him, and I will see him whenever I wish, wherever I wish. Do not make me bring Lord Thornbury into this matter as, believe me, this is a battle you will lose.”

  Tompkins appeared so startled I suspected she had been successfully intimidating the mothers of her charges throughout her career as a nurse. Well, not this time. After casting a glance that should have turned me to stone, she stepped aside, just as Nick, evidently recognizing my voice, let out a plaintive wail. I dashed to the cradle, snatched him up, and settled into the rocker, where I burbled nonsense to him, as mothers have done since the dawn of time.

  Whatever was I going to do when Nick and I were forced to part? Marry the first man who would have me so I could have a babe of my own?

  A babe who would never be Nick, the child entrusted to my care. Adara, I’m trying, I really am. But it’s not easy. The way is dim and my courage falters.

  I’m not certain how long I sat there. Nick had fallen asleep some time before Ivy broke into my fevered thoughts, informing me the bell had sounded, signaling it was time to dress for dinner. I pressed a kiss to Nick’s forehead before tucking him into his cradle and once again facing the necessity of enduring the scrutiny and disapprobation of my employer and her guests.

  Lady Winterbourne had changed the seating arrangement, I discovered. I was now flanked by Sir Laurence Carewe, Lady Cynthia’s father, and Lord Dalrymple, Lady Pamela’s father. I found both hearty and well-spoken, even if their gazes tended to wander from my face. I was, after all, accustomed to that. My figure was as much the bane of my existence as my face and hair. There was a time when I had longed for rich brown hair and a sylph-like silhouette, but somehow, in recent days my sentiments had undergone a change. I refused to contemplate why.

  As soon as the ladies left the gentlemen to their port, Aunt Trevor and Emilia descended on me, whisking me off to a corner, where they could express their indignation. “The witch!” Emilia cried. “She treated you abominably, Luce. How could you stand it? She had no right—”

  “She had every right,” I returned. “She is paying me to accommodate her every wish.”

  “But, Lucinda, my dear,” Aunt Trevor said, “anyone with eyes in their head could see she kept you running from pillar to post the entire afternoon for no reason at all.”

  I smiled. “She had a very good reason. Her son whisked me off the servants’ cart and took me up in his curricle when she is directing all her attention to finding him a wife. Which, she has informed me, is not to be I.”

  “You are quite worthy of an earl,” my godmother declared with considerable indignation.


  “Indeed,” Emilia echoed. “You would suit him far better than those mamas’ darlings she is parading before him.

  I reached out a hand to each, saying as gently as I could. “I might have been . . . but those days are long gone. And indeed, I doubt his interest in me includes any thought of matrimony.”

  “Lucinda!” My aunt reared back, as if she’d been stung by a bee.

  “Oh, do not say so!” Emilia cried. “That was so long ago, Luce. I am certain no one thinks you actually—”

  “Have you not been listening over the past few days, Emmy?” I returned quietly. “You know that is not true. A reputation, once lost, cannot be repaired.”

  “Except by marriage,” Aunt Trevor pronounced, like a judge from on high. “Now that you have returned to the land of the living, I see no reason why you cannot join the competition for the role of Countess of Thornbury.”

  “Tell that to Lady Winterbourne,” I returned with considerable bitterness. I did not add that I might have to wait for Nick to grow up before I had any chance of assuming the title of Lady Thornbury. Providing, of course, his notion of love extended to marrying a woman twenty-three years his senior.

  Lady Winterbourne, evidently wishing to interrupt our family colloquy, demanded that Emilia play the pianoforte for her guests’ entertainment. My sister plays very well, but I scarcely heard the notes that rolled so effortlessly off her fingertips. Miss Lucinda Neville, a serious candidate for Lord Thornbury’s hand? No indeed. Dalliance was all he had in mind. And—I faced the matter squarely—very likely considerably more. He thought me a fallen woman, experienced in the ways of the world. Why would he not pursue me for bed sport? That is what rakes do. Particularly rakes cut off from London’s array of pleasures while struggling to maintain the Winterbourne estate.

  As the Fates would have it, at this low point in my thoughts, the gentlemen joined the ladies, and to my acute embarrassment, not a single lady in the room missed the earl’s beeline path to my side. I attempted to assume the look of innocuous subservience expected of a companion, though I fear my face froze somewhere around prideful indifference.

  “I apologize for my mother,” Thornbury said as he bent over my chair, his voice pitched to my ears alone. “Her managing was not well done.”

  “She wishes me to understand my place, my lord.”

  I kept my eyes face front, but I had no trouble hearing the steel in his voice as he said, “Your being my mother’s companion is a ruse so you may remain at Winterbourne unremarked, nothing more. You are a baron’s daughter, the equal of any lady present.”

  This grand generalization brought my head sharply round. “If we are comparing our fathers’ ranks, may I remind you mine comes next to last, outranking only Sir Laurence. And that was before I blotted my copy book by eloping with a line officer.”

  A slight pause before he responded in a voice of lower timbre, “You must have loved him very much.”

  “Yes.” I let the word hang a moment before a jumbled mix of honesty and longing compelled me to add, “But that was many years ago, and I am but one among many who lost a man to the war. I have only recently accepted that life goes on and I must relearn how to be part of it.”

  “Thornbury,” Lady Cynthia interjected, as she and Lady Pamela floated to a stop in front of us. “Lady Ariana is about to play the pianoforte, and she has asked most particularly for you to turn her pages. She declares you read the music far better than the rest of us.”

  Arrant nonsense, of course, as all the young ladies had studied the pianoforte since their fingers were long enough to play a chord. But who was I to quibble? Once again, I had been favored with private conversation by the lord of the manor. I could afford to let him go, while I feasted my eyes on him standing—tall, elegant, and deliciously handsome—behind the expanse of the piano. If that meant beside Lady Ariana Rutledge, so be it. It was I he had singled out for conversation. I, he had plucked from the servants’ cart to ride beside him in his curricle.

  I, who knew the identity of the baby in the nursery.

  A shiver rippled up my spine.

  Chapter 20

  The next day I arrived in the morning room just as Lady Winterbourne was finishing her daily conference with Mrs. Randall. The kindly housekeeper offered me a genuine smile with a brisk, “Good morning, Miss Neville,” as she passed me on her way out of the room. Faced with another day of assorted harpies, I needed that. God bless the good-hearted.

  “Nothing vigorous today, Miss Neville.” My employer, ensconced at her bureau de dame, a veritable confection of elaborate marquetry, waved me to an equally elegant sidechair next to her own. “After yesterday’s exertions, I have no doubt the ladies will wish to recoup their energies. A bit of embroidery, a soupçon of the latest on dits—perhaps we may initiate plans for a poetry reading or charades. Therefore, I believe we may dispense with your services until well after luncheon. Shall we say, three o’clock? At that time you will meet me in the Blue Salon, where I will inform you how you may assist me in the activities planned for the remainder of the day.”

  I had to struggle not keep my jaw from dropping. I was being given five hours of freedom? Astonishing. Other than providing the ladies ample opportunity to dissect my character, I could come up with no reason for Lady Winterbourne’s largesse. Unless a kind heart actually beat beneath that austere façade. I thanked her, curtsied, and had to force my feet to a steady pace when they wished to fly across the carpet to the door. However, having led such a sedentary life for the last few weeks, I must admit I was winded by the time I arrived on the fourth floor. We were enjoying an unusually long spate of good weather, even for the Cotswolds, and I was determined Nick and I were going to enjoy it. We were going out!

  Out? Vividly recalling what happened the last time Nick and I ventured out, I slowed to a halt some ten feet short of the nursery door. The eyes of the footman guarding the door flicked in my direction before he straightened abruptly to a proper eyes-front.

  Babies needed fresh air and sunshine, I argued. So did I. Accustomed to riding every morning, even when visiting my sisters, I chafed at the bit as badly as a horse confined too long to the stables.

  There’s danger out there, my inner voice warned.

  And what do you call the atmosphere inside? I shot back.

  Think of the babe.

  I am!

  In the end, I banished my inner voice, at least for an hour or so.

  After getting directions from Ivy and Flora, I scooped Nick up and—amid silly maunderings about what a fine adventure we were going to have and answering chortles from Nick, who undoubtedly understood every word—we crept down the servants’ stairs and set off for the right-hand side of the pond. There, I’d been told, we would find a small dock with a bench seat on one side, where Nick and I could sit and enjoy the view.

  Through the garden, past the maze, turn left. And, sure enough, there was the promised path. Swept by the wonder of this unexpected freedom to roam, I shifted Nick’s weight to my shoulder and forged ahead. The dock, surrounded by a cluster of three rowing boats, was exactly where I expected to find it. I sat on the wooden bench, propped Nick up in my lap, and began to point out all the beauties of nature that surrounded us. The fluffy white clouds in a blue, blue sky. The ripples made by fish jumping in the liquid blue of the pond. A mama duck gliding along with her brood of ducklings following at her tail. Birds swooping in and out of our line of sight, an occasional bee or butterfly. Nick greeted each sight with enthusiasm, his blue eyes with a tinge of green gleaming with excitement as he took in the great unknown he had seen but once before.

  He was bright as a button, my Nick. My heart swelled with pride. Eventually, we succumbed to the somnolence of the day. Holding Nick firmly in my lap, I leaned against the flat board railing behind my back and soaked up the peace and quiet, along with the warm rays of the sun.

  “Miss?”

  I nearly dropped Nick, I confess it. He squealed as I squeezed him too hard when
shock caused me to fumble my grip. A man stood before us. Not an Englishman. His clothes, his dark visage, his stance proclaimed him a foreigner. I could even hear it in the single word he had spoken to me. He did not belong at Winterbourne; yet somehow I felt no menace, although my heart seemed to be trying to pound its way out of my chest.

  “I not want fright you,” he said, clutching his cap in both hands. “I am Petros. Petros Andreadis. I must ask. Babe is son of Adara Demetriou, yes?”

  “You knew her?” Eyes wide, I held my breath, the significance of the moment instantly apparent. This stranger could have the answers we needed.

  The man nodded, his face a mask of pain tinged with hope. “In village they tell of coach. Big crash. Babe come, mother die. Is true?” Of course the whole village knew. A coaching accident, a woman’s death, would have been the talk of the town.

  “I am so sorry, but yes, it is true. Adara did not survive the birth of her child.”

  His dark eyes fixed on Nick. “This child?”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped closer, his eyes never leaving Nick’s face. Nick returned his scrutiny with calm interest, the intruder yet one more new element in an exciting day.

  “Is boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” The man rocked back on his heels, eyes shut, breathing hard.

  I summoned Miss Lucinda Neville of Neville manor and said, “I believe it is time you told me what you are doing here.”

  After a long moment of silence, he fixed me with the most sorrowful gaze I had ever seen and said, “There was time when Adara and I plan to marry. Then . . .?” He shrugged. “Great English lord see my Adara. Must have.”