A Bride by Moonlight

by Liz Carlyle

  “Oh, I had a letter,” Lisette lied, her gaze firmly fixed upon the stockings. “I didn’t read it until after dinner. My old nanny is unwell.”

  “Why, that is terrible!” said Anne, her pretty face falling. “Are you still close? Obviously you are. You look stricken.”

  Lisette managed a feeble nod. “She lives with me. In Hackney. I think I must go home. That’s what I came to tell Gwyneth and Diana, you see. That I’m leaving.”

  “And I just got here.” Anne pulled a sad face. “The loss is mine, Elizabeth. Saint-Bryce must be disappointed, too. Or will he see you home?”

  “I . . . no, he won’t,” said Lisette. “I mean, he doesn’t know I’m going. I haven’t told him yet.”

  “Ah,” said Anne, cutting her an odd glance. “Well, then. When do you go?”

  “In the morning,” she said. “I’ll be able to get a train, won’t I?”

  “Heavens, yes. They run all day.” Anne snapped out another nightshirt. “Lud, look at this! Mended at least eight times. Uncle’s valet was seventy-five—devoted, but nearly blind—and Uncle would not put him off. That’s why his things are in such a frightful state.”

  “Your uncle must have been both frugal and loyal,” said Lisette. “And his wife must have loved him very much. I mean, if she could not bear to . . .”

  “To sort out his things?” said Anne on a sigh. “Yes, she was utterly devoted, though he was quite some years her senior. Duncaster introduced them. I cannot imagine her grief.”

  But Lisette’s mind had turned back to that long-ago conversation with Lady Hepplewood in the library. “I would have guessed her more of a realist than a romantic,” she murmured, pairing up two stockings and tossing them into the appropriate carton.

  “Oh, Aunt was not always the dour creature you’ve probably observed,” said Anne gently. “She has changed vastly.”

  “Since her husband’s death, do you mean?”

  Anne lowered the shirt she was folding and considered it. “I think it was before then,” she finally said. “Around the time I married, I think she . . . altered, somehow.” Anne shook her head as if to shake off the thought. “And then she and Uncle Hep began staying here all the time. And Tony went off to live in London.”

  But Lisette wondered what had driven the Hepplewoods apart, for that surely seemed the case. “In any event,” she remarked, “no one seems to mind that she and Diana remain here.”

  “Lord, no,” Anne agreed. “Besides, Loughford is Tony’s now—and, as Gwyneth and I were remarking earlier, it hasn’t a dower property attached.”

  “Has it not?” Lisette folded another pair of stockings. “Well. I cannot quite see Lady Hepplewood returning to Loughford after the wedding to live under Miss Willet’s purview.”

  “And really, who could blame her?” Anne agreed. “But Burlingame is three times Loughford’s size, so we can all rattle round in here like marbles, scarcely striking one another.”

  “Will Tony and Miss Willet be spending much time here after the wedding?”

  “Why, I daresay they shall,” said Anne. “This has always been Tony’s second home. And Felicity seems to like it very much.”

  “When do they mean to marry?” asked Lisette.

  “Diana was just asking me, which is what prompted the dower discussion,” said Anne. “The wedding is set for mid-August.”

  “Goodness, that’s just weeks away.” Lisette cut Anne a sidelong glance. “But Diana said that—”

  Anne looked at her sharply. “Diana said what?”

  Lisette shook her head. “I may have misunderstood.”

  Anne flashed a mischievous grin. “I doubt it,” she teased. “Come, we are practically cousins already! What did Diana say?”

  Lisette gave a weak shrug. “She merely suggested the betrothal would not last. I collect she meant that Lady Hepplewood would stop it.”

  “Well, Aunt mightn’t be terribly pleased, but she’ll reconcile herself.” Anne gave a weary smile. “As to the remark, that was likely Diana being—well, let us charitably call it protective. She wasn’t any happier when Gwyneth told her Tony and I were promised. She felt like the odd one out.”

  And yet it had been Diana and Tony—along with Gwyneth—who’d shut Anne from their little clique as children. “But you were very young then, weren’t you?” she blurted.

  Too late Lisette realized she looked like a gossip.

  “Ah, Gwen’s been tattling, hasn’t she?” said Anne, chuckling. “Yes, there was a mad marriage scheme between Grandpapa and Uncle Hep, but none of us really heeded it.”

  “You never cared for Tony in that way?”

  Anne lowered her hands, now clutching a striped waistcoat. “Tony and I adore one another and always have,” she said, looking a little exasperated. “Yes, I thought I might as well marry him. I daresay we’d have got on. But then I met Philip. And a week later, I realized—”

  “Realized what?”

  Anne shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “I should like to know,” said Lisette, “if it isn’t personal.”

  Anne bit her lip. “Well, it isn’t personal to me,” she clarified, glancing about the room. “It’s just that I never told Gwyneth. I wanted to. But just wouldn’t have done, you see. Gwen can be so defensive of me—as if I’m incapable of looking after myself.”

  It was an odd and rather tender view of Gwyneth, and one Lisette had never considered. “Why on earth would she need to defend you?”

  Anne sat back down on her stool, crushing the waistcoat in her lap. “It’s just that I had come out that year with Diana,” she said, her eyes a little guilt wracked. “But halfway through the Season, I met Philip. And oh, Lisette, I liked him so much! We shared so many interests—books, poets, politics! But I felt as if I were meant for Tony—that he needed me, you know?”

  “But I can’t imagine,” said Lisette, “that Tony would have expected such a sacrifice.”

  “Apparently not.” Anne’s lips quirked with humor. “Because one evening—some weeks after our come-out ball—I caught him in the library kissing Diana.”

  “Kissing Diana?” Lisette’s brow furrowed. “But kissing her . . . how?”

  “Good try,” said Anne wryly. “But it was not a brotherly peck. He had her bent over his arm and she had a hand on—ah, but never mind that.”

  “Oh,” said Lisette softly. “Well. Were you angry?”

  “A little.” Anne looked chagrinned again. “But I waited a few more weeks, and when nothing came of any of it—Tony seemed fixed on neither of us, to be honest—I just stopped feeling so frightfully loyal. I told Papa I wished to accept Sir Philip’s suit, and that I would not be denied. Aunt Hepplewood was very angry.”

  “Heavens, what did you do?”

  Anne gave a lame shrug. “Eventually, I had to tell her why,” she said. “She was outraged at first. Then, on her next breath, she made it out to be a mere dalliance. But then she suggested—in this grim, irritated tone—that Tony would likely get round her objections in the end.”

  “I gather Tony is rarely refused anything by any female.”

  “So far as I know, it’s never happened,” said Anne on a laugh. “But to marry the steward’s daughter? That was looking low indeed, to Aunt’s way of thinking. Still, she always did give in.”

  “So what happened?”

  Anne lifted both hands, palms up. “Oddly, nothing,” she said. “It was very strange. I married Philip the following spring. And eventually, Diana accepted Papa’s suit. And now Tony is fixed as well.”

  “You married the person who was perfect for you,” said Lisette reassuringly. “And soon Tony shall. As to Diana, once she’s over the grief of your father’s death, she’ll find someone. She’s already said Lady Hepplewood means them to go to London next Season.”

  “Oh, excellent!” Anne’s face brightened hopefully. “I must begin to think of someone perfect for Diana. By then you’ll be married, too. We must put our heads together.”
<
br />   Lisette thought Anne one of the most charitably disposed human beings she’d ever met. Her presence—and her sheer normalcy—went a long way toward assuaging Lisette’s view of the whole family.

  And what a pity that, in the end, it would mean nothing. Lisette would be gone from this place, and soon forgotten.

  “Well,” she said brightly, pushing in the drawer. “That’s emptied, Anne. What shall I do next?”

  “The walnut night tables.” Anne pointed left and right. “Each has two drawers cramp-full of heaven knows what. I think you’ll want to draw up a rubbish bin.”

  The drawers being small, it seemed easiest to pull them out and carry them into the sorting area. The first was filled with gentlemen’s periodicals, all months out of date. Lisette emptied it carefully, returned the drawer, and carried over the second.

  This one, rather oddly, was stuffed with a folded length of brilliant green fabric, some of it cut to bits. Lisette lifted out a piece, and let it dangle. “These are just scraps,” she said. “But the larger piece might be salvaged.”

  Anne looked up from a tangle of braces she was pairing. “Lord, don’t pitch any of that out,” she said, throwing up a hand. “Diana will have our heads.”

  Lisette dropped it and picked up another piece, almost identical. The fabric was a lush, heavy green velvet—and very familiar-looking velvet, too.

  “Anne,” she said curiously, “aren’t these Lord Hepplewood’s old bed-hangings?”

  “Yes, and his curtains, too,” said Anne, flicking a glance up. “Or, more correctly, that the fabric was left over from the sewing of his hangings and draperies. After she fitted out the room all those months ago, Diana stuffed the scraps in a drawer.”

  “Like this—? All hacked up?”

  Anne’s brow furrowed. “No, in one piece in the bottom of that wardrobe, I think,” she said. “But Gwen found it and began cutting it up for compresses when we were nursing Uncle Hep.”

  “Oh.” Lisette looked at her curiously. “Were you here?”

  “Oh, yes, when I could be,” said Anne, triumphantly freeing one of the braces. “When Uncle was restless, we’d soak compresses in cold vinegar for his forehead and wrists. It was a trick my stepmother often used for fever.”

  “Nanna did that when my sister and I were small,” said Lisette. “It’s oddly soothing.”

  Anne shrugged. “And velvet, we thought, would feel quite nice,” she said. “But Diana had a fit. She said she was saving it to make a Parisian green counterpane.”

  Something inside Lisette went perfectly still.

  Parisian.

  Paris.

  For a long moment, Lisette stood there, scarcely daring to breathe as she scrabbled through her brain, one arm hitched beneath the little drawer.

  “Anne,” she said a little sharply, “did Diana perhaps say a Paris Green counterpane?”

  Anne looked up, her expression bland. “She might have done. Uncle adored green. But he was so ill by then, it seemed awfully optimistic. Still, Gwen stuffed what was left of the velvet away to appease Diana.”

  Inwardly, Lisette ran through her logic again.

  Good Lord. Could it be so simple? But what were the chances of such a thing happening? And entirely by accident?

  A chill ran through her. Both Gwyneth and Mrs. Jansen understood scientific things; astronomy and mathematics and yes, chemistry. Abruptly, she set the drawer down, stuffed a velvet scrap in her pocket, and then strolled toward the hearth.

  The strange kettle still swung from its hook in the firebox.

  No. It was not possible.

  Still, she spun around, her heart suddenly pounding. “Anne, I beg your pardon,” she blurted. “I just remembered—the letter—I should post a letter to Nanna. To tell her I’m coming home.”

  Anne was standing by one of the tall dressing chests, pushing one of the drawers in. “Yes, of course,” she said. “You’ve been a great help. But Elizabeth, you’ll likely arrive home with the letter—or within hours of it.”

  Lisette nodded, and tried to calm herself. “Perhaps so,” she said. “But I mightn’t go tomorrow, you know? It might be Friday or Saturday. I should let her know, do you not think? Just so she’ll know I’m definitely coming? That I haven’t forsaken her?”

  “Oh, it will cheer her immeasurably, I am sure,” said Anne brightly. “Thank you for your help. Shall I see you at dinner?”

  “Oh, yes. I shall look forward to it.”

  Swiftly, Lisette made her escape.

  Quite by happenstance, Napier timed his visit to the schoolroom for half past ten. It was an hour when Mrs. Jansen was most apt to be taking Beatrice out for a morning romp since no trace of rain remained, and the day had dawned brilliantly sunny, with a stiff breeze that had dried the landscape.

  His task, it seemed, could no longer be put off.

  Napier strode through the house a bit like a man bound for the rope. He’d hoped to delay another day or two, but Lisette’s anguish and Craddock’s gout left him with no excuse to dawdle. He was going to have the conversation he’d been avoiding since coming to Burlingame—certainly since his last visit to the schoolroom.

  Napier met the winsome pair coming down the staircase, Mrs. Jansen with a large bonnet in one hand and what looked like a novel in the other.

  “Saint-Bryce!” said the child, her face lighting up.

  “Good morning, Bea.” He stopped on the landing to make her a little bow. “Mrs. Jansen, you are in good looks today.”

  “Oh, how do you do, my lord?” said the governess. “Are you not off to Berkshire?”

  “No, Craddock was willing, but his foot still looks a misery,” said Napier. “I thought I might walk in the orchard with Bea instead—assuming you’ve no objection?”

  Mrs. Jansen blushed prettily. “No, my lord, not in the least.”

  Napier turned and offered her his arm. “Perhaps you might like to sit on the bench above, just to keep an eye on us,” he suggested. “Bea might decide to climb up a tree again. In which case, you’ll have to come down the hill and get her out, since I’m afraid of heights.”

  At that, both females laughed and Beatrice began to tease him unmercifully. A few minutes later, they had deposited Mrs. Jansen and her book upon the bench and were making their way down the hill toward the stables in a stiff but not unpleasant breeze.

  “You aren’t going to climb up a tree, are you?” he asked warily.

  “Not if I have something better to do,” said the child, grinning up at him.

  “Ah,” he said. “What did you have in mind for today?”

  The girl shrugged, and flopped down in the grass beneath her favorite tree. “We might go down to the boathouse,” she suggested, “and skip stones on the water again?”

  “Aye, we might,” he said reluctantly.

  Later, Napier was to wish that he’d encouraged the child’s notion. But in that moment, he simply wanted to avoid the damned boathouse—as he’d been doing for days now. Merely glimpsing it through his window reminded him of his passionate interlude there with Lisette, and of the crashing argument that had followed.

  It was the same pattern they’d followed again last night, but with far more harrowing results.

  Lisette had not even appeared at breakfast this morning. Napier was sure, for he’d gone down early, having been unable to sleep, and lingered until everyone else had dined. He had lingered so long, in fact, that the servants had begun to mill about, anxious to clear the sideboard.

  Finally Napier accepted that Lisette didn’t mean to come down at all; that even as he sat hunched over a cold cup of coffee, his stomach in a knot and his heart half broken, she was likely packing her trunks and wishing him to the devil.

  But if he was going to dwell upon the chaos that constituted his love life, he might as well go down to the lake and throw himself in. Far better to turn his attention to someone he perhaps could help.

  He joined Bea in the grass, with little regard for the grumbling
that would ensue when Jolley saw his trousers.

  They had met here with some frequency, he and Beatrice, Napier having learned the girl’s schedule and gained, in some measure, Mrs. Jansen’s trust. He had been relieved to learn the woman always hovered near, well within earshot and usually carrying a book or something pertaining to Bea’s lessons. Though there was a fine line between the two, he’d decided the child was not neglected, but was instead given a healthy amount of independence. In that knowledge, at least, he’d found some comfort.

  Napier stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. Beatrice followed suit, her tiny brown boots peeping from beneath a froth of lace. Then she fell back into the grass and stared up into the branches now clattering a little in the wind, crossing her hands over her heart.

  He glanced down at her. With her blonde ringlets fanning around her head, Bea looked rather like an angel. He had developed a great fondness for the girl, he realized, and no small amount of tenderness. Suddenly, that unfamiliar emotion gripped his heart a little—wounded, wrung-out organ that it had become these last miserable hours.

  But it would not do to be maudlin on such a lovely day. Beatrice had enough of that in her quieter moments, he suspected. Instead, he inhaled deeply. “Ah, smell the fresh air, Bea,” he said. “I shall miss this when I return to London.”

  “Is the air in London truly foul?” asked Bea absently. “Mrs. Jansen says it smells worse than the sewage canals in Amsterdam.”

  He laughed, and fell back into the grass beside her, staring up into the skirling canopy of green. “It often does,” he agreed, wedging his hands beneath his head. “Especially when that notorious odor is blended with the acrid stench of coal smoke and the reek of the riverbank, and the whole miasma is pressed down upon the city by a fog. They call it a London Peculiar, and you can scarcely see through it.”

  “If it stinks so, why would you go back?” The girl sounded wistful.

  “Oh, because of my work,” he said vaguely.