“I expect I do,” Mr. Applewhite conceded. “Though not as well as my wife did, God rest her soul. She could recite chapter and verse on everyone in the county.”
Maggie never thought she’d live to see the day when she regretted the passing of Mrs. Applewhite. The vicar’s wife had been a font of local knowledge. She’d also been the bane of Nicholas Seaton’s existence, and a great critic of Maggie’s behavior, too.
In his wife’s absence, the vicar had seemed like the next best person to question about the mysterious Father Tuck.
Maggie had wanted to call on him at the vicarage, but after returning from Mr. Entwhistle’s, and finding that Fred and the others had come back early from their visit to town, there had been no possibility of getting away. Not alone. She’d had to settle for inviting Mr. Applewhite to dinner the following evening.
Unfortunately, between Fred and the Beresfords, she’d scarcely managed to get a word in edgewise, let alone a moment for private conversation.
“I wonder if she ever knew my cousin?” Lionel asked. “John Beresford, Viscount St. Clare. A strapping blond fellow. Quite tall.”
Maggie’s muscles tensed. The past week had been one long fishing expedition on the Beresfords’ part. Abetted by their sneaking servants, the two of them wheedled and probed, casting about for any scraps of information that might reveal some connection between St. Clare and Somerset.
“Was he a resident here?” Mr. Applewhite asked, frowning. “I don’t seem to recall the name.”
“Indeed not,” Maggie replied. “Lord St. Clare has never been to Beasley Park, or to anywhere hereabouts that I’m aware.”
Fred scowled. “Must we speak of him? This is meant to be a merry party.”
Mrs. Beresford affected not to hear him. “I believe the viscount must have visited the region sometime or other,” she said. “Perhaps he used an assumed name? Young gentlemen will have their pranks. To be sure, his father indulged in many such amusements when he was a young man. And blood will tell, they always say. Like father, like son.”
“An assumed name?” Mr. Applewhite appeared utterly perplexed by this line of inquiry. He turned to Maggie. “Who did you say this fellow was again?”
“It’s not important. Quite the opposite.” She set aside her needlework. “It’s late, Vicar. Shall I call for your carriage?”
Mr. Applewhite gave her a look of relief. “Yes, thank you, Miss Honeywell. You are very good.”
Maggie rang for a footman. And when, a short time later, the same footman returned to announce that Mr. Applewhite’s carriage was ready, she insisted on accompanying the aged vicar out herself.
“I’m obliged to you, Miss Honeywell,” he said as they descended the curving staircase and passed through the entry hall. “Such hospitality. You’re to be commended for the fine meal. And the wine—from your father’s cellar, I collect. A splendid vintage. I haven’t tasted—”
“Mr. Applewhite,” Maggie interrupted. “There’s something particular I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Eh?”
A footman opened the front doors for them, and Maggie and the old vicar passed out onto the wide stone steps. The night was cool, the evening sky dusted with stars. An old carriage pulled by two equally old chestnuts awaited the vicar in the drive.
There was little privacy to be had. Only the space of seconds between the top of the front steps and the bottom. Maggie took full advantage of them. “Have you ever encountered a clergyman in the district by the name of Father Tuck?”
“Who’s that?”
“Father Tuck. It would have been some thirty years ago, I suspect.”
“Don’t know of a Father Tuck.” Mr. Applewhite’s brow creased. “I’ve heard of a Friar Tuck, of course.”
She frowned. “Quite. But this man wasn’t a character in Robin Hood.”
“Certainly not. Though I daresay that’s why he was called such. Expelled from his order, I believe it was. Never met him myself but heard the tales, a long time past. Something to do with that hedge tavern in Market Barrow.”
“Market Barrow!” Maggie’s pulse skipped.
“Love of drink is at the heart of many of the world’s sorrows, Miss Honeywell,” Mr. Applewhite said. “I won’t say a man can’t enjoy it, but one mustn’t ever become a slave to the grape.”
At that, they reached the bottom of the steps. Maggie stood, unmoving, as a waiting footman helped the vicar into his carriage and shut the door after him. She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell. But her mind wasn’t on Mr. Applewhite’s departure. It was on Market Barrow. On Friar Tuck and Jenny Seaton.
It was on Gentleman Jim.
She was so distracted by her thoughts that she didn’t notice Fred coming down the steps to join her. She started in surprise when he appeared at her side. “Good lord, you gave me a fright.”
He was dressed in an evening ensemble, his coat tight across his shoulders and his silk neckcloth as lavishly arranged as ever. He’d long ceased wearing his sling. “I came to escort you back to the house.”
“That was unnecessary.”
“On the contrary.” He took her elbow. “You’ve been overexerting yourself.”
She shrugged out of his grasp. “By walking the vicar to his carriage? Hardly.”
Fred kept pace alongside her, up the stone steps and back through the marble entry hall. “I’m not talking about the vicar. I’m talking about your visit to Entwhistle yesterday. A visit you made when you were supposed to be confined to your room with a megrim.”
Her gaze jerked to his. “Who told you I’d been to see him?”
“His housekeeper, Mrs. Square, came to tea with our Mrs. Wilkins this afternoon. Their conversation was overheard.”
Our Mrs. Wilkins. As if the housekeeper at Beasley Park already belonged to him. Or, even worse, to the both of them. As if they were already a married couple.
“Overheard by whom?” she asked.
“Beresford’s valet. A canny fellow. He keeps his ears open.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Maggie said acidly.
“And a good thing, too,” Fred went on in the same officious tone. “I don’t like you walking off alone in your condition. If you wanted to go over estate matters, you should have told me. I’d have accompanied you in the carriage.”
Maggie stopped at the foot of the main staircase. Her voice sank to a whisper. “I’m never getting in a carriage with you alone again. Next time I might not be lucky enough to have a highwayman happen along to save me.”
Fred’s face reddened in the light of the crystal chandelier that hung overhead. “Must you make everything an argument? You force me to take you in hand.”
“Is that what you call it?”
He again grasped her arm. “If you’d exert yourself to be sweet to me on occasion—”
“I shall exert myself to slap your face if you don’t let go of me.”
His body went stiff as a poker at her words. Taut seconds passed before he grudgingly released her. “Your temper is unbecoming.”
“Then you must take care not to rile it.” And clutching the heavy skirts of her silk dinner dress in her hand, she turned to climb the stairs.
Early the next morning, before the guests—or their servants—had risen from their beds, Maggie crept down to the Beasley Park stables. Made of stone, with strong wooden doors and red-clay roof tiles, they housed the Honeywell coach horses, riding horses, and what remained of her father’s bloodstock. As a girl, the stables had been her second home. Now however, there was a distinctly unwelcoming air about the place.
“What do you mean my carriage isn’t available today?” she asked, outraged.
The stablemaster, Mr. Tilley, shuffled his feet. He held his cloth cap in his hands in front of him. “Mr. Burton-Smythe says as how I’m not to allow any use of the vehicles unless it’
s on his authority.”
Tilley had been employed at Beasley Park for only two years, the majority of which Maggie had been either ill or in mourning. No doubt he’d come to look on Fred as his master.
“That’s all very well,” she said, “but Beasley Park belongs to the Honeywell family. To me, in fact. And I need my carriage this afternoon.”
Fred and his guests would be lunching with Sir Roderick at Letchford Hall, and then driving down to view a neighbor’s collection of etchings. Their absence would provide the perfect opportunity for Maggie to embark on an errand of her own. An errand that required her maid and her carriage.
And perhaps one of Papa’s pistols.
He had a smallish one in his collection. An old Queen Anne that would fit nicely inside Maggie’s reticule.
Tilley fidgeted with his cap. “I’d like to oblige you, Miss Honeywell, but I did promise Mr. Burton-Smythe I’d do as he told me.”
Maggie’s blood commenced a slow boil. She endeavored to keep her temper. She wouldn’t have anyone accusing her of being as unreasonable as her father. Not after what Mr. Entwhistle had said to her. “Well then, I’ll simply have to take up the matter with Mr. Burton-Smythe, won’t I?”
With that, she strode from the stable, but she didn’t go back to the house. She was too angry. Besides, it wasn’t long past dawn. No one was up yet, save the kitchen staff. And frustrated as she was, she couldn’t condone waking Jane merely to complain to her about the injustice of it all.
Instead, she walked.
She crossed the drive and made her way out over the sloping lawn and down to the path that would take her to her sanctuary. The old meeting place she’d shared with Nicholas so many years before.
Branches caught at the skirts of her pelisse as she went deeper and deeper into the trees. The stream lay ahead, framed by the blue splendor of its forget-me-not covered banks. It was as she stopped amidst the sweet-scented wildflowers, one hand clutched at her side, panting for breath that she saw him. A fine, tall gentleman standing along the edge of the water.
He was clad in breeches and top boots, the broad lines of his shoulders outlined by a dusky blue coat that had obviously been cut by a master tailor. He held his tall beaver hat loose in one hand along with his whip, looking for all the world as though he was waiting for someone.
For her.
At the sound of her tread on the grass, he turned to look at her. But she already knew who he was. There was no mistaking that golden hair glinting in the morning sun. No mistaking those stormy gray eyes and that lean, panther-like grace.
His name formed on her lips as she ran to him. His real name.
He reached her in two strides and caught her up in his arms, lifting her straight up off of her feet.
She clung to him, uncertain whether to laugh or to sob. “You’re here,” she whispered, breathless, against his cheek. “You’ve finally come home.”
St. Clare wrapped his arms around Maggie, holding her so close against him that the toes of her leather half-boots no longer touched the ground. He buried his face in her hair. She wasn’t wearing a bonnet. He had the vague idea that she’d dropped it when she ran to him.
Good lord, she’d run to him. And she shouldn’t be running at all. Not in her present state of health. Even now, he felt her struggling for breath.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Why did you come back? You know you can’t—”
“Hush, love.” He slowly lowered her back to the ground. His concerned gaze moved over her face. Every curve and contour was as precious to him as his own life. More precious than any title ever could be. “Come and sit down.”
“Where?”
“Here. On the bank.” He stripped off his coat and laid it down upon the damp grass.
“You gallant idiot. You’ll ruin it.”
“Sit,” he commanded. As if he cared one jot about his coat. He had dozens more where that one came from, each of them as elegant as the last.
“Very well. But only because you insist.” Maggie reluctantly sank down onto his coat. She was wearing a fitted dark blue pelisse over a plain muslin gown, her thick hair tied back in a simple knot at her nape. Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes extraordinarily bright. “What do you mean by coming here?”
“And what do you mean by striding about in this manner?”
“I’m walking off a temper fit.”
His lips quivered. “Already? At this hour of the morning?”
“Don’t change the subject.” She gave him a worried look. “I thought we agreed it was too dangerous for you to come home?”
“We did. There was only one problem.” He dropped down at her side. “I couldn’t stand another second apart from you.”
Her expression softened. “Was it very awful?”
He grimaced. “I was working myself into a state apparently.” Pining like a lad after his first woman, his grandfather had said. Ridiculous.
She touched his cheek, her fingers as light as butterfly wings brushing over the hard edge of his jaw. “I missed you, too.” Her hand curved around his neck, tugging him closer. “Dreadfully.”
He bent his head and kissed her. Or possibly, she kissed him. He wasn’t entirely certain. All he knew was that his blood suffused with warmth at the touch of her lips, and every restless part of him sighed with relief.
She was here. Back in his arms.
“Maggie…”
“I nearly didn’t come here this morning,” she said. “If I wasn’t so angry—”
“You and your temper.”
Her fingers slid into his hair. “I’ve lately heard it’s unbecoming.”
“Not to me.” He nuzzled her cheek. “My fierce, beautiful girl.” He felt her mouth curve in a smile. “You burn so very brightly. Is it any wonder my life has been so cold without you?”
“I don’t wish you to be cold. But I still don’t think this is a good idea. Your coming here.” That didn’t prevent her from kissing him again.
He was vaguely conscious of the breeze rippling through the trees along the stream, and of his hired horse milling about nearby, cropping grass along the bank. A reminder that he was not, in fact, in a private room somewhere with his beloved, but under a clear blue sky, in the great wide open of Beasley Park.
It was the only thing that kept him from prolonging their embrace.
Drawing back, he rested his forehead gently against hers. “It’s all right. No one saw me riding up. The house looked all but deserted.”
Her eyes widened. “You rode up to the house?”
“I did,” he said grimly.
He hadn’t expected it to affect him. Seeing the sprawling Palladian manor house of honey-colored limestone. Walking over the sloping grounds blanketed in forget-me-nots. But it had affected him. Quite deeply, really. Indeed, every stone and timber provoked another storm of memories.
Coming home, Maggie called it.
But this had never been a home to him. It had been a place where he’d worked. Where he’d suffered. Where he’d felt the anguish of not belonging. The pain of rejection, even from his mother—of stifled hopes, and of dreams that would never ever come to pass.
If he’d had a home at all, it hadn’t been here at Beasley Park. It had been her. Maggie Honeywell had been his home. His only harbor in the storm.
All those years abroad, wandering the world, St. Clare wondered how he’d ever managed to go so long without her. Ten long years, with nothing but his memories to sustain him. It didn’t bear thinking of, not now that he’d seen her again. Not now that he knew she was free. That she’d been waiting for him all this time. His love. His Maggie.
“Is it the same as you remembered?” she asked.
He pulled a face. “Smaller.”
“It stands to reason. You’ve grown bigger, after all.” She lay back on his coat,
her head resting just over the edge of the collar on a tuft of forget-me-not covered grass. “Do you remember us lying here together that day? Before it all went wrong?”
“How could I forget?” He was tempted to lie down next to her. In for a penny, in for a pound, wasn’t that how the saying went? But there had to be limits. Even for him. He cleared his throat. “Have you come here often down the years?”
“Too often for my own good.” She turned her head to look at him. The collar of his coat brushed her cheek. “I believe most of these wildflowers have been watered by my tears at one time or another.”
He took her hand. The thought of her weeping over him made his chest constrict. “That’s all over now.”
“Yes.” Her fingers curled around his.
“I thought of this place a good deal,” he said. “Especially in the beginning. I wanted to come back here again. To see if I’d feel the same.”
“Do you?”
He huffed a breath. “No.”
She lifted her brows.
“It was never this place that made me happy.” He brought her hand to his lips. “It was you.”
Her eyes glistened. Good lord, the way she looked at him. As if he were, indeed, as essential to her as light or air. Her soul mate. The other half of her heart.
It both electrified and humbled him. More than that, it filled up the emptiness inside him. Made the broken pieces of him whole.
She’d been right that day in Hyde Park. Neither of them could exist outside the presence of the other. He knew he couldn’t. Not anymore.
“I love you, Maggie Honeywell,” he said huskily. “You do know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you love me? Not just the memory of me…of him…but me, as I am now?”
“Yes. For all eternity.” Her voice was a velvet promise. A vow that had never been broken. That couldn’t be broken. Not by time or distance. Not even by death, he suspected.
“Say it,” he commanded. “I need to hear it.”
“I love you, Nicholas Seaton.” Her eyes held his transfixed. “I love you, John Beresford. Whatever you call yourself, however much you’ve changed, you’re mine.”
Gentleman Jim Page 23
