by Emily Larkin
Chapter Nineteen
April 13th, 1807
Devonshire
“I still don’t remember a thing,” Barnaby said, and it was extremely disconcerting to know that the roof literally had fallen on his head and he couldn’t recall it.
“It’s just as well.” Marcus poured them both sherry from the decanters lined up on the oak sideboard. “Rudkin was screaming. I think the sound will live in my nightmares forever.”
Barnaby accepted the glass Marcus held out to him. He crossed to the French doors that led to the terrace, and gazed out at the encroaching dusk. “How is Rudkin?”
Marcus came to stand beside him. “As spry as he ever was. Thanks to Merry.” He raised his glass in a silent toast.
“And Doctor Curnow? What did he have to say about it all?”
“I don’t think he knew what to say. He was remarkably silent. Dumbstruck.”
Barnaby glanced at Marcus. “What did you tell him?”
“To consider it a miracle. Two miracles. And to please not discuss it with anyone. God only knows what he thinks.”
“That it’s magic,” Barnaby said dryly. He sipped the sherry and gazed out the window, up the valley, towards Woodhuish House. He thought of the warm red brick and the whimsically twisting chimneys. “Merry said you haven’t decided what you’re going to do with Woodhuish House.”
“Did she?” Marcus turned sideways and leaned his shoulders against the wall. “That’s not exactly true. I had hoped . . . that you would like it.”
Barnaby glanced at him. Marcus’s expression wasn’t quite as nonchalant as his posture. “I do like it.”
“It’s yours, if you wish. Yours and Merry’s. Consider it a wedding gift.”
Barnaby knew how the doctor had felt: dumbstruck. After a moment, he managed to say, “Merry told you?”
“She told Charlotte. Charlotte told me.”
Barnaby stared out the window. Woodhuish House as a wedding gift? He didn’t know what to say. Should he refuse? Accept? Insist on paying for it? Finally, he turned to Marcus and said, “Thank you.”
Marcus nodded.
For a moment, he felt he should say more—protestations of gratitude, vows of everlasting friendship—and then he realized it wasn’t necessary. Marcus understood.
Barnaby turned back to the window and took a sip of sherry. A peculiar sensation was growing beneath his breastbone, a sensation unlike anything he’d felt before, an odd mixture of contentment and excitement. He wasn’t sure what to call it. A sense of looking forward to the future?
“There’s a large farming estate three miles from here,” Marcus said. “Been badly mismanaged. The owner’s looking to sell.”
“How badly mismanaged?”
“Very badly. It would be a challenge. But the right man could turn it around.”
Their eyes met. Barnaby found himself grinning. “I’ll ride over and look at it tomorrow.
Marcus nodded, and sipped his sherry. “Have you given thought to Charles’s christening?”
“Yes. I’d like to stand as his godfather.”
“Good.” Marcus’s shoulders relaxed fractionally; that nonchalant pose had been even more fake than Barnaby had realized.
A sudden lump grew in his throat. “Marcus . . . you’re my best friend.”
Marcus surveyed him for several seconds, and then gave a small, slightly crooked smile.
Barnaby had been reading Marcus’s smiles for thirty years. This smile said, I know. And it said, You’re my best friend, too.
The lump in his throat grew bigger. He took a hasty gulp of sherry. Behind them, the door opened.
Marcus pushed away from the wall. “Merry.”
Barnaby turned around sharply.
Merry stood on the far side of the drawing room, dressed for dinner in a gown the color of amethysts.
He stared at her. Merry. Merry of the astute eyes and sharp mind, who saw things no one else saw, and said things no one else would say. Vibrant, forthright, unconventional Merry. Merry who ran down hills like a young girl. Merry who loved to dance and to laugh. Merry, who had saved his life in more ways than one. His Merry.
“I’ll see where Charlotte is,” Marcus murmured, put down his glass, and slid from the room.
Barnaby put his own glass down blindly and took a step towards Merry. Her eyes met his, a dimple peeked in one cheek—and then they were both in the middle of the drawing room, and her arms were around his neck, and he swung her up and held her very, very, very tightly.
A long moment passed, during which he stood with his eyes closed, drinking in the sheer wonderfulness of holding her—her warm body, her faint floral scent, her soft hair tickling his jaw. “You slept a long time. Are you all right?”
“Perfectly. You?”
Barnaby set Merry on her feet and examined her face. “I’ve never been better.” Thanks to you. But for Merry, he’d have turned around before he ever got to Woodhuish.
She hadn’t merely given him his life, she’d given him his life.
He touched her cheek, where the dimple quivered. “When shall we get married? Would you like the banns read, or a special license?”
“Special license,” Merry said firmly. “Next week. Unless . . . you want to wait?”
Barnaby shook his head. “The sooner, the better.”
And then he laughed, and swung Merry up in his arms again, and kissed her joyfully.
Author’s Note
I confess to taking some liberties with geography. Although Woodhuish does lie on the southeast Devon coast, Woodhuish Abbey is actually based on Hartland Abbey, in northwest Devon, with its gothic façade and walled gardens. And my Woodhuish has many more trees than the real Woodhuish.
Woodhuish House is reminiscent of Mapledurham House, which is in Oxfordshire, rather a long way from Devon. The Tudor brick chimneys look extremely similar to those at Hampton Court Palace, in Richmond upon Thames.
The cave system is loosely based on Kents Cavern in Torquay, about ten miles north of Woodhuish. (At the time this story is set, it was known as Kent’s Hole.) Roman coins were found in Kents Cavern, as were the remains of cave bears, cave lions, saber-toothed cats, wolves, cave hyenas, wooly rhinos, and mammoths. I like to think that Marcus would allow members of the Linnean Society access to the Woodhuish caves, and that similar items might be discovered there.
Trusting Miss Trentham
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Faerie godmothers do not exist.
Chapter One
October 31st, 1808
London
Miss Letitia Trentham, England’s wealthiest unmarried heiress, received her eighteenth proposal of the year at the Hammonds’ ball. The Little Season was drawing to its close and the company was thin, but more than a hundred people crowded the ballroom. Four of them were currently angling after her fortune.
When Laurence Darlington suggested that they sit out their next dance, Letty experienced a sinking feeling. When Darlington suggested that they repair to the conservatory, the sinking feeling became stronger. The conservatory adjoined the ballroom—was in fact in full view of the ballroom, had a table of refreshments and an attendant footman, and could hardly be called secluded—but it was secluded enough for a proposal.
Experience had taught Letty that it was better to get proposals over with as swiftly as possible, so she let Darlington lead her down the short flight of marble stairs.
The musicians struck the first notes of a contredanse. “Champagne?” offered the footman.
Yes, a big glass, Letty thought. “No, thank you.”
Laurence Darlington led her to the farthest end of the conservatory, where there was a stiff array of ferns and a row of gilded chairs precisely aligned. Only a glimpse of the ballroom could be seen. Music floated down the steps. The smell of the ball—sweet perfumes, spicy pomades, and pungent sweat—smothered any scent of greenery.
Letty sat and smoothed the sea-green silk of her ball gown over her knees and br
aced herself for what was to come. For the past two weeks, Laurence Darlington had been doing a good impression of a man falling in love. It was one of the better impressions she’d seen this year, although not as good as Sir Charles Stanton’s. That had been masterful.
Laurence Darlington sat alongside her and gazed ardently into her eyes. A very handsome man, Darlington. The most handsome of this year’s crop of fortune hunters. And up to his ears in debt.
“Miss Trentham,” Darlington said, emotion throbbing in his voice. “What I am about to say can surely come as no surprise to you.”
No. No surprise.
Letty heard the proposal with weary resignation. It was a pretty speech. Darlington wasn’t fool enough to call her beautiful; instead, he praised her character and her intelligence. Even so, his words resonated with falsehood. When he finished, he said passionately, “There is no one I would rather marry. No one! You are everything I could ever wish for in a wife.” The first half of that statement rang with a clear, bell-like tone. It was actually the truth. The second half gave a discordant clang in Letty’s ears.
“I lay my heart at your feet.”
Darlington was a good actor. He did almost look like a man who’d laid his heart at his lover’s feet. His handsome face bore an expression of hopeful longing and his eyes burned with passion.
Passion for my fortune.
“You love me, Mr. Darlington?”
“Yes,” Darlington said fervently.
“And my fortune . . . ?”
“Means nothing to me!”
Darlington’s delivery was perfect—the earnest expression, the vehement tone. Letty might have believed him, if not for the dissonant clang in her ears, like a cracked church bell being struck. She took a moment to be thankful that she had a Faerie godmother, that she’d been given a wish on her twenty-first birthday and that she’d wished as she had, that she could hear Darlington’s lies.
“Tell me, Mr. Darlington, if we married, would you be faithful?”
Darlington blinked. He hadn’t expected that question. None of her suitors ever did. But she always asked it. “Of course!”
Clang.
Letty nodded, as if she believed him. She looked down at her hands and smoothed a wrinkle in one of her gloves. “Is it true that you’re a gambler, Mr. Darlington?”
Darlington appeared not to have expected this question either. There was a short pause, and then he said lightly, “I roll the dice occasionally.”
Letty glanced at him. More than occasionally, and more than just dice. Cards. Horses. Dogfights. Cockfights. Prizefights. Anything and everything, if what she’d heard was correct.
“And is it true that you’re almost bankrupt?”
It was a shockingly rude question to ask, one she wouldn’t have asked in her first season, or even her third, but years of fortune hunters had taught her that bluntness was best.
Darlington stiffened. The mask of passionate lover slipped slightly. His smile was fixed, almost a grimace.
They stared at each other for a long moment, while the strains of the contredanse drifted down from the ballroom, and then Darlington relaxed and laughed. “My dear Miss Trentham, I can assure you that—”
“I sympathize with your financial troubles, Mr. Darlington,” Letty said brusquely. “But I will not marry you.”
Darlington lost his smile. He closed his mouth. The glitter in his eyes wasn’t passion. Color rose in his cheeks. Not embarrassment, but anger.
His jaw tightened. He stood stiffly and turned from her without speaking, strode across the marble floor, climbed the shallow steps to the ballroom.
Letty watched him disappear among the dancers. Fury surged through her, fierce and bitter. How dare he? How dare any man pretend a love he didn’t feel and vow a fidelity he had no intention of keeping?
On the heels of fury was an urge to cry. Tears stung her eyes. Letty blinked them back. She would not cry over a man like Laurence Darlington. She wouldn’t cry over any false suitor—a promise she’d made to herself in her first season.
But that promise was becoming harder to keep. The proposals had always hurt, but this year they hurt more than ever. This year, each proposal made her feel older and plainer and lonelier. Lonelier than she’d ever felt in her life. A hopeless, aching loneliness. And while part of that loneliness was because her cousin Julia had died last year, an equal part of it was because she was twenty-seven and still unmarried. Will no one ever love me for myself?
After all these years on the Marriage Mart and nearly two hundred proposals, it seemed unlikely.
I wish I wasn’t an heiress. For a brief moment, Letty indulged in a dream of going somewhere far, far away where no one knew who she was, and winning true love, like a princess dressed as a pauper in a Faerie tale.
She snorted under her breath. Princesses in Faerie tales were always beautiful, and she was most definitely not beautiful.
Perhaps that’s what I should have wished for on my twenty-first birthday: Beauty, not hearing lies. But then she would have been a beautiful heiress, besieged by suitors and unable to hear their falsehoods—and that road must surely have led to misery.
“Miss Trentham?”
Letty glanced up. A man stood before her. He was tall, taller than Darlington, and broad in the shoulder. He was dressed for dancing in a tailcoat and knee breeches and silk stockings, but despite those clothes he looked as if he had no place at the Hammonds’ ball. No languid tulip of the ton, this man. He was whipcord lean, his skin tanned brown, his expression unsmiling. He looked almost dangerous.
Letty felt a slight flare of nervousness. She looked for the footman. Yes, he still manned the refreshment table.
“Miss Trentham?” the man asked again. The tan gave a misleading impression of health. He wasn’t just lean, he was gaunt. His tailcoat, for all its fine cut, hung on his frame.
A soldier back from India, invalided out? His dark brown hair was clipped short and his bearing was military.
“Yes.”
“My name is Reid. I wondered if I might have a few words with you?” She saw exhaustion on his face, and tension.
Letty hesitated, wishing for the nominal chaperonage of Mrs. Sitwell, currently ensconced in the card room. Get this over with, whatever it is. “I’m engaged for the next dance, but until then you may certainly speak, Mr. Reid.”
“Thank you.” He gave a curt nod.
Letty folded her hands in her lap and gazed up at him, trying to look politely expectant, not nervous.
Mr. Reid gave her a long, frowning stare and then said abruptly, “You have a reputation for being able to distinguish truth from lies.”
Letty tried not to stiffen. “Some people believe I can.” She said it with a smile of amusement, as if she thought it a joke.
Mr. Reid didn’t return the smile. “Can you?”
It wasn’t the first time Letty had been asked this question. She’d learned to turn it aside with a jest, with a lie. But something about Mr. Reid made that impossible. His eyes were intent on her face. They were an extremely pale shade of gray, almost silver. She had an odd sense that his gaze was razor-sharp, penetrating skin and bone. Her awareness of him became even stronger—his tension, his exhaustion. There is something very wrong with this man.
“Sometimes,” Letty said, and heard a clang in her ears at the lie. “Sit down, Mr. Reid. Tell me what it is you wish to know the truth of.”
Reid hesitated, and then pulled one of the gilded chairs out of line and sat at an angle to her. He moved like a soldier—precise, controlled movements with no graceful flourishes.
Once seated, he was silent for several seconds, then spoke tersely: “There are two men here in London—I served with them in Portugal—one of them passed information to the French.”
Letty blinked, hearing the truth in his words.
“I’ve spoken with them, and they both say they didn’t, but someone did, and they were the only ones who knew other than the general and myself. The
general didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t tell anyone. One of these two men lied, and I can’t tell which one. Would you be able to?”
Letty released her breath slowly and sat back in her chair. “Perhaps.” Clang. “If one of these men is a traitor, what will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Clang.
“That, Mr. Reid, is a lie.”
Hope flared in his silver eyes, flared on his gaunt face. He leaned forward. “You can tell.”
“What will you do to him?” Letty repeated.
“Probably kill him.” This time, Reid spoke the truth.
Tiny hairs pricked up on the back of Letty’s neck. She glanced at the footman, stationed at the refreshment table, and back at Reid. Common sense urged her to push to her feet and walk from him as quickly as she could—run, if she had to. This man was dangerous, possibly even deranged.
Wary caution kept her where she was. “I need to know more before I decide whether I can help you.”
Reid sat back in his chair, even tenser than he’d been before. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
He stared at her for a long moment, grim-faced, and then began to speak. “I was on General Wellesley’s staff, an exploring officer. Reconnaissance. We’d been in Portugal less than a month. We engaged the French at Roliça, and then four days later at Vimeiro.”
Letty nodded. She’d heard of the battles. Victories for England, both of them. “August of this year?”
“Yes.” Reid’s hands were clenched together, his knuckles sharp ridges beneath the gloves. “I had three local scouts. I went out daily with them. Not all together, you understand. I’d go with one man; the others would scout alone. We met each evening. On the day before Vimeiro, just on dusk, we were captured. The scouts were summarily executed.”
Killed in front of him, was what he meant. Letty swallowed. “Why weren’t you executed?”
