Stranger at the Dower House (Strangers Book 1)

by Mary Kingswood

  “What was her ambition, Mr Labett?” Edgerton said.

  “Why, to marry, of course, but not just anyone. A clerk like her father wasn’t good enough for Dorothea. She was going to marry a gentleman, and so she learnt how to be a governess so that she’d have a way to meet such men. Such a clever girl, Dorothea! Why would anyone want to kill her, Captain Edgerton?”

  “Until we know who it was, it is impossible to say,” Edgerton said. “Did she mention a name? Or tell you anything about him? If you can remember her last words—”

  “You can read them,” Mrs Labett said. “We have kept all her letters.”

  And so they had. In a special box for the purpose was every single letter written by Dorothea Labett to her parents, and the very last one laid out all her hopes very clearly.

  ‘My dear Mother and Father, I write to you in the greatest excitement, for all I have ever wished for is about to come to fruition. Can you believe that your humble daughter will shortly become a great lady, with wealth unimaginable and a fine house of my own at last. No longer will I be at the beck and call of insolent children and their haughty parents. No one will despise me ever again, for my future is about to change beyond all recognition. How happy I shall be, and how rich! Tell Jack he may have his apprenticeship after all, for I shall be well able to pay for it. I shall have so much money I shall hardly know what to do with it! I shall write more as soon as all is settled. Your loving daughter, Dorothea.’

  “No name,” Edgerton said, disappointedly, flicking through several more letters. “She never says his name.”

  “There is enough here to identify him, surely,” Chandry said. “She says she will be a great lady with a fine house, and there cannot be many such around Great Maeswood. We will find him out soon enough.”

  ~~~~~

  Louisa found herself greatly troubled in mind, and it was all Laurence’s fault. How perfectly hare-brained of him to fall in love with her and start talking about marriage in that ridiculous way! And just as she had settled her future to her own satisfaction, too. She had given up all thought of taking a lover — what a foolish scheme that had been, she quite accepted that now. She had even abandoned her plan to move to Bath. Great Maeswood was clearly not sufficiently far away from Pamela, but somehow, with her friends around her, she felt she could withstand even Pamela’s visitations. She would stay in the Dower House and improve the garden and be boringly respectable.

  And now Laurence wanted to marry her. What would it be like, such a marriage? She did not have to struggle to imagine it. There would be smiles over the breakfast table. There would be long, long walks with all the dogs. There would be rainy afternoons beside the fire with their books, partly reading and partly discussing this point or that. The evenings would be filled with leisurely dinners and cards and conversation — endless conversations over the Cognac. And at the end of the day, she would have her lover, too.

  Of course, it would not be just the two of them. Henrietta and Edward would be a part of their lives for many years to come, and Miss Gage, too. There would be friends and evening engagements and morning calls and perhaps stays in London or Bath. But always at the heart of it would be Laurence, the sun around whom her world orbited.

  Which was exactly the trap he had pointed out to her. Naturally she would accede to his wishes and then… she would suffocate. It was madness. Barely a year since Ned had died and already she was contemplating surrendering her longed-for freedom. No, she could not do it. And yet somehow, the thought of it filled her head.

  Worse, she missed him abominably. Why did he have to keep going away, depriving her of his friendship? The emptiness that had haunted her marriage and her year of mourning had disappeared when she had moved into the Dower House… when she had met Laurence. That day when he had brought her a whole box of wine, and they had sat drinking together in the butler’s room as if they had known each other for ever… that was when the emptiness had vanished. When he went to Bath, it had gnawed at her again, but then he came home. And now he had gone again.

  Was it love, this strange feeling? Was that what she had lacked, all those years with Ned? She could not tell, and somehow it evaded all her efforts to analyse it. If she attempted to examine her own heart rationally, the feeling slithered away from her, like the tiny speck in one’s eye that moves whenever one tries to look at it. She could not trust to so flimsy a sentiment, so seemingly ephemeral that she felt it might fly away at any moment. It was hardly a firm enough foundation for marriage. There needed to be solid, reasoned arguments in favour before one made such a serious commitment, and there was no reason to marry Laurence, none at all. She had ample money to live upon, her own home, her friends and her reputation was intact. She could still enjoy Laurence’s company as his friend, so what need was there to marry? And he had told her very clearly not to marry just because she could contemplate living with him, but only if she found she could not live without him. And she could, perfectly well, so that was an end to it.

  So she went about her daily round, telling herself sternly that she had no desire whatsoever to marry Laurence, and yet thinking about him every moment. He was her first thought when she woke, her last before she slept and he haunted every waking moment. He so distracted her that she twice walked to the village and forgot why she was there, she received an agonised letter from Esther asking why she had not written for an age, and she was so wrapped in her thoughts one day as she drove the gig that the pony turned out of the Dower House drive and straight in through the gates of the Hall. Louisa arrived at the stables almost before she knew what was happening.

  “Good day again, Mrs Middlehope!” the head groom called out cheerfully, looking up from the coach wheel he was inspecting. “We haven’t seen you for a while. Thought Goronwy was getting the hang of it.”

  “So did I,” she said. “The little fellow is determined not to change his ways. Do you know, I think he will be happier here. You may keep him, and the gig, too. ”

  Nimbly she jumped down from the gig, and set off to walk back through the park to the Dower House, collecting the dogs from the stables where she had left them not ten minutes earlier.

  “Come along, you two. It seems I am not going to Market Clunbury after all, so we can go for a very long walk instead.”

  They entered into the project with enthusiasm, bounding away down the drive and across the road into the lane that ran between the Grove and the Glebe. Louisa followed them, not really caring where she went, head down, lost in her own thoughts. So it was that she found herself emerging from the lane into a hamlet, no more than a dozen or so cottages, sleeping peacefully in the sun. This must be Lower Maeswood. An old woman sitting outside peeling vegetables waved cheerfully to her, and two small children ran to see the dogs, who promptly rolled over to be tickled. They tired of the game even before Louisa reached them and streaked away again, this time through a pair of ivy-clad wrought iron gates enticingly left ajar.

  “Mercury! Mars!” she called, but without much hope of being attended to. Mercury’s nose appeared momentarily inside the gate, then off he went again. Laughing, Louisa squeezed through the gap between the gates and followed him. As she brushed the ivy aside to pass through, a metal sign became visible — ‘Lower Maeswood Grove’. This, then, must be another, long disused, entrance to the Grove. On the other side of the gates, the drive was almost invisible beneath burgeoning weeds, and the towering trees of an avenue cast the way into deep gloom. The dogs were invisible in the undergrowth to one side of the drive, but their progress was marked by snapping twigs and rustling leaves and every so often they bounded back to her for reassurance, then off again.

  After about a half hour of walking, long after the drive had dwindled to a mere track, the gloomy overgrown avenue gave way to more orderly parts of the garden, and above the highest shrubs, she could see the smoke rising from the chimneys of the house. There was a dried-out fountain not far away with a rusty metal bench nearby, and here she sat, watching a black
bird rummaging for grubs and beetles in the cracked and debris-laden bowl of the pool. The dogs, tiring by now, came and sat at her feet, and absently she stroked their heads and ran her hands over their soft fur.

  This, she supposed, was the way her life would be from now on. Long walks with the dogs, long evenings with her books, two card parties a week and the occasional dinner invitation. Most of the time, the dogs would be her only companions. Laurence would be there sometimes, but there would be so many hours alone. Months, years, decades alone. She was thirty years old, and she might, if she were very fortunate, live for another fifty. Five decades of being alone. These dogs would grow up and mature and die, and others would take their place, and yet others, and still Louisa would be alone. Her longed-for freedom from the tyranny of matrimony merely set her free to be lonely.

  She cried. There was no comfort to be found in such thoughts. No friendship, not even Laurence’s, could protect her from such a future. The only answer was family… marriage…

  The dogs’ heads lifted in unison, then abruptly they bounded off again towards the house. Wiping her tears away with her sleeve, she followed them.

  Could she do it? Could she submit to marriage again? Perhaps in a year or two…

  Three dogs raced back towards her, then a fourth.

  “Kenneth! Julian! Hail and well met, my friends. How lovely to see you again.” She bent to stroke Kenneth’s head as he nuzzled against her. “So who is with you today?” She caught a glimpse in the distance of a man following them with the look of a gamekeeper about him. “Is it—?”

  Laurence!

  Her heart leapt with joy and she let out a little cry of delight. She turned towards him with eager steps, faster and then faster until she was running in good earnest, the sooner to be with him. He was rushing towards her with just as much urgency, his face alight with happiness, his arms held out to her and then she was there, swept into his embrace so firmly that she was lifted clean off her feet and swung round in a circle, as her lips found his. They kissed, laughed, kissed again and again, laughed some more.

  When the wave of elation which had swept them together had ebbed a little, he held her tight in his arms and she closed her eyes and rested her cheek on the rough wool of his coat with a sigh of contentment.

  “Louisa?” he murmured, his voice very close.

  “Mmm?”

  “Does this mean… dare I hope that… have you… changed your mind?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “You will marry me?”

  She lifted her face to see his incredulous expression. “I will. I looked into my future without you and realised that it would be bleak and desolate and unbearably lonely. I cannot imagine what took me so long to see that.”

  “Nor can I,” he said innocently. “It is quite unaccountable, so charmingly irresistible as I am.”

  “Idiotic man! But Laurence, you know I can never have children?”

  “Then you will just have to share mine,” he said equably. “Shall you mind having Viola living with us? She has some absurd notion of leaving if we marry, and—”

  “I sincerely hope she will stay,” Louisa said at once. “I am hopeless at managing a house, and depended utterly on my mother-in-law and the servants at Roseacre. I am perfectly willing to depend utterly on your sister instead. However, there may be one point of conflict and I have to tell you, Laurence, that I am implacable on the matter. I cannot marry you unless Chambers can have free rein in the kitchen.”

  He laughed out loud. “You will find no objection from me on that score. Mrs Rogers is competent enough in her way and has an excellent hand with a sponge, and her rabbit pie is incomparable, but to my regret she cannot make a good soufflé. We will find a way to arrange matters to accommodate Chambers, and all your servants. Viola is always saying she would like another footman and a housemaid or two. Do you wish to have the bedroom at the other end of the balcony? I will climb in and out of windows if it is what you truly want, but I cannot help thinking we would be more comfortable in adjoining bedrooms.”

  “Or the same bedroom,” she said softly. “My parents always shared a room and their marriage seemed to thrive on it.”

  He went very still. “Do you know, that seems like a wonderful idea,” he said huskily. “This is going to be a very different kind of marriage from my last.”

  “For me also,” she said. “We shall make a life that suits us both, Laurence.”

  29: A Bonnet For Miss Gage

  Louisa had rather hoped they could have a quiet hour together before facing the world again, but Laurence was impatient.

  “Let us tell everyone at once!” he cried, his face alight with enthusiasm. “They must share our happy news. I cannot wait to see their faces.”

  Louisa felt she could wait quite easily. The children… well, children were adaptable, but Miss Gage was another matter. She had never taken to Louisa and would have her view of her as a predatory widow fully confirmed. Still, there was no use in putting it off. Depositing the dogs at the stables, Laurence marched into the house with Louisa firmly on his arm and sent Skeates to summon the family to the Roman Saloon, which he deemed suitable for an announcement of such import. They came scurrying in, and sat in a line on the sofa, Miss Gage anguished, Henrietta excited, Edward frowning, still clutching his Latin book.

  “You will be delighted to hear that Mrs Middlehope has consented to become my wife,” Laurence said, resting his hand on hers where it lay on his arm. “I need not tell you that this makes me very happy, and grateful for my good fortune. You may be assured that this need not cause any disruption to our settled way of life. We shall go on just as before except that Louisa will be added to our little family.”

  “Will you still give me lessons?” Edward said.

  “Of course. Nothing will change.”

  His face lifted, and Louisa could only marvel at the confidence of a man who could inflict a new wife on his family, not to mention her entire household, and say without the slightest hesitation that nothing would change. Perhaps that truly was the way he saw it, that Louisa would simply fill an empty corner of his life and everything else would go on exactly as before. She knew otherwise.

  “Oh, I am so, so happy for you!” Henrietta cried, bursting out of her seat to try to wrap her arms around both of them. “I knew it would happen, I knew it! Honora said you would never marry again, Papa, but I could see how much happier you have been since Mrs Middlehope came to the village. May I be a bridesmaid? Please?”

  “Naturally,” Louisa said, laughing, but she was scarcely heard over Henrietta’s effusions.

  After a while, Laurence said, “Enough, child. Louisa will come to dinner and we can discuss it further then, but for the moment you and Edward should return to your lessons.”

  And then there was only Miss Gage, sitting rigidly on the sofa, her hands tightly clenched, on the verge of tears.

  Louisa knelt at her feet, and gently took one of her hands. “Dear Miss Gage, forgive me for disrupting your life in this abominable way, but truly I could not help falling in love with your brother. He is just too delightful for me to resist. But I promise you I have no wish to overturn all your arrangements, and I wish with all my heart that we can be friends and go on comfortably together. The momentous step I am taking and the responsibilities I am taking on terrify me. Not just Laurence, but Henrietta and Edward, too, and this house… I shall need all the help I can get.”

  “But you managed Roseacre,” Miss Gage said.

  “Roseacre managed itself, as it had done for generations, and I was too lazy to interfere. I liked to dabble in the gardens, and I should love to do so here, if you and Laurence will not mind it, but it would be the utmost relief to me to leave the house in your capable hands, and not have to muddle through it myself.”

  “It is so difficult!” she burst out. “And it will be worse with another mouth to feed, and then there will be children, and—”

  “No children,” Louisa said firmly. “Not
for me.”

  “Even so… you are so expensive,” Miss Gage said. “You like everything of the best, and it is so hard to budget as it is, and I could not stay to watch you ruin Laurence, truly I could not.”

  Louisa sat back on heels. “Is that the problem — money? There is no need for you to worry about that.”

  “No, indeed,” Laurence said. “I shall have the income from Catherine’s money again, Vi, I explained all that.”

  “Only until she marries! Another two or three years, and that money will be gone, and then were will we be? We shall end up as poor as the Cokelys, I know it, and I could not bear it.”

  “But I have my jointure,” Louisa said.

  “Not if you remarry,” Miss Gage said. “A widow always loses her jointure if she remarries.”

  “Not always. My father settled all his money on me that was not tied to the estate, which was a considerable amount, and since I have no children to claim a share of it and my husband was a generous man, it is all mine, with no conditions. I have an income of six thousand pounds a year, Miss Gage.”

  She squeaked in astonishment.

  “Good God!” Laurence said. “You are richer than I am. That makes me a fortune hunter, I suppose.”

  “Except that you knew nothing of it,” she said, laughing, rising to her feet and taking his hands. “You are not going to cry off, I hope? We have been betrothed for less than an hour, and it would be humiliating to be jilted quite so rapidly.”

  “I would throw you over at once, naturally, except that honour obliges me to marry you, although under the greatest protest, you understand. No doubt I will grow accustomed to the misery of great wealth in time.”

  “If you truly hate the idea, I can give it all away, and we can live in contented poverty. I should not wish to begin married life by displeasing you.”

  Miss Gage squeaked again, in alarm this time, and Louisa was instantly contrite. To have all one’s monetary worries swept away and then reinstated mere seconds later must be desperately unsettling.