by Nhys Glover
‘And that talk had her leaving today? The gossip mill is more knowledgeable than I gave it credit,’ she bit out, no longer concerned with politeness. She turned her back and headed for the safety of the threshold of her home.
‘Have I offended you, dear lady? I do beg your pardon if I have inadvertently done so. I know she is a dear friend to you. I am sure that the gossip is incorrect in regards to her.’
‘Thank you for coming all the way out here to visit me, Sir Rathgart, but if you will excuse me, I have urgent matters to attend to within. I am not at liberty to entertain guests at present. Maybe in a week or so. If you would care to send a card beforehand…’
She was through the doorway now and Haversham was at her side, bowing obsequiously.
The man had followed her right to the threshold. ‘I will certainly do just that, my dear lady. In a week then. I will look forward to the occasion with great anticipation.’ His handlebar moustache dipped from side to side as he wobbled his top lip.
‘Haversham?’ she indicated the door and the man. The look the butler shot her was shocked affront. But he did her unspoken bidding.
With a stiff bow in the direction of the young man, he began to close the door. ‘Thank you for your kind concern, sir, I am sure her Ladyship will be in a better state to receive guests in a week’s time.’ And he closed the door on the man.
Fidelia breathed a sigh of relief. She had never been so frightened in her life. And yet she knew she was being silly. The man had posed no real threat to her at all. But there was something not quite right about that man. The way he looked at her. The way he seemed to know exactly what was happening in her life, out here in the country. How could he have known Phil was leaving today? No one but the staff knew that information. Had he bribed one of her servants? But to what end?
‘I am not at home to that man, Haversham. Now or in a week’s time. He said he was a friend of my husband’s, but I have never met him. Do you recognise him?’
Again, that look of affront, as if she had stepped over a societal line by requesting such information from him.
‘No madam, that gentleman was unfamiliar to me. Will there be anything else?’
Fidelia shook her head and turned toward the morning room where a mid-morning coffee was awaiting her. Of later, she had taken to the habit of drinking coffee instead of tea. Its strong, bitter taste seemed to suit her better than the milky tea that was her usual beverage. It was still not the done thing, except by the upstart Americans that were infiltrating the ton, but she didn’t care. This was her home, for the moment at least, and so she would eat and drink what she liked here without the critical eyes of the world on her.
But, obviously, the eyes were on her, even here in her own home. Who was that odd little man, and what was the real purpose behind his visit?
CHAPTER TWO
Lord Jasper Horton paused for a moment over the tome he was reading to look out at the winter scene beyond the window. There had been heavy snow this year and the moors were pristine white with it, even now. Set against the clear blue sky and winter sunshine, it was quite the most beautiful sight he’d seen in some time.
In moments like this his life felt oddly satisfying. Certainly, it was not the life he would have chosen for himself, largely imprisoned in an ancient Keep on the desolate Yorkshire Moors, but in the last six months it had become less onerous. Now he could appreciate his studies in the warm library, while the world outside was white and cold. Now he could appreciate the friendships of his fellow in-mates and the companionship of his best friend, Byron Carstairs. Now he could look in the mirror and not be disgusted by the handsome, gentlemanly face that hid the monster beneath.
If he still looked back at his old life with regret, it was only to be expected. His had been a fortunate life up until that fateful night. He was the eldest son of landed gentry, wealth and privilege his birth right. His golden good looks and athletic physique only added to his good fortune. With parents and siblings who loved and respected him, an intellect that few rivalled, and all the time he needed to indulge his unquenchable thirst for knowledge, every day had been a blessing.
Then the worst had happened and he’d willingly embraced atonement, accepting the limits placed on him for his crime. Up until six months ago that kind of acceptance was all he had. But then Philomena Davenport had come into all their lives and brought with her a different perspective, a different way of seeing who and what they were. She was the light in their darkness, and because of her, he had found the courage to reunite with his family.
It still felt wrong, somehow – their willingness to forgive him for what he’d become, to accept who or what he now was. But if they were willing to do that, then he had to be willing to forgive himself and accept that part of him that was so unacceptable.
Or that was what he told himself. He still had a long way to go before he reached that point. But it was his goal. One day he would forgive himself for murdering his housekeeper …
‘Jas? Any luck?’ Byron asked, coming up to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder at the tightly scrawled notes on the page beside the tome.
‘I’m not sure alchemy is the answer. It all seems a bit too close to magic and witchcraft for my liking,’ Jas answered, turning from the scene out the window and focusing on his friend.
Byron was happier these days. Since Philomena came into his life, he had become almost happy. Yes, his lot was still as heavy as it had always been. His role as their guardian, their keeper, was just as onerous as ever. But now with his bride beside him, he handled it with a lightness that had never been his before. Not in the last two and a half years that he’d known him, anyway.
‘Some would say that you are the stuff of magic and witchcraft,’ Byron countered with a grin.
He grinned back, letting his mouth quirk up at the sides in self-deprecation. ‘I suppose they might. Like vampires and ghosts. I suppose one must put aside the prejudices of the intellectual mind and allow for all possibilities. But it does annoy me to read how a mixture of hemlock, mouse blood and a ground scorpion’s tail can cure blindness.’
‘Some physicians are still leeching bad humours from the body to cure diseases today.’
‘Yes, but leeches can be useful in bringing down inflammation.’
‘Exactly. So, in amongst the crack-pot theories, you might find grains of truth about magical beings. Don’t give up.’
Jasper gave a disgusted little grunt and turned back to his reading. If he hadn’t given up by now, then he doubted he ever would. But that didn’t make him optimistic. It just meant he was, on some level or other, bloody-minded. He was never going to let himself accept that there was no hope for them.
‘Phil returned from the south a little while ago. I have told Cook to prepare a welcome home dinner for her. She needs a little uplifting. Her friend’s grief has distressed her greatly.’ Byron leaned against the window frame and stared out at the snowy moors.
‘Better pull out the violin then, had I not? We all became very adept at making your wife feel better when you left her.’
Jas knew he was touching on a still-sensitive wound for Byron, but where Phil was concerned, he, like the other inhabitants of the Keep, could be very protective. When Byron had left Phil, trying to drive a wedge between their growing attachment to each other, he’d hurt her so badly that it almost led to her death. It had taken all the denizens of the Keep to help her weather that traumatic period. They all loved her – for her father, for herself and for her whole-hearted acceptance of them. They would do anything for her now, even stand up for her against Byron, if need be.
Not that they were needed in that way, anymore. Byron loved his new wife to distraction. Despite his harsh persona, he was all gentle kindness and warmth whenever he dealt with Philomena. Jasper had no doubt that Byron would die for her if it was required of him.
‘I wish there’d been someone with a violin to help me feel better back then…’ Byron sounded defeated for a moment
, and Jasper was immediately contrite. Of course, Byron had suffered as badly as Phil had. He’d been sacrificing his own needs for hers by leaving. It was only in hindsight that such a sacrifice had proven unnecessary.
‘Well, you have no need of violins anymore. You have the love and companionship of a beautiful woman who adores you. Few are so favoured in life.’
Byron let the sombre expression slip from his harsh features, and he smiled again. His hazel eyes were suddenly as warm as a midsummer forest.
‘No need for violins, but your playing is always a pleasure to hear. If you had been a lesser man, you might have made a career for yourself with that instrument.’
‘A lesser man? My social position neither makes me a greater or lesser man. If anyone should know that, you should.’
Byron grinned at him again, as if he’d led Jasper to a conclusion that he’d wanted him to make. Just as the comment about leeches had been designed to get him to see value in all learning, so the comment about being a lesser man had been designed to make him acknowledge the man he was. To measure himself against the virtues he valued, so he could measure how far short of them he actually fell.
In truth, except in the instance of his housekeeper’s death, there was little Jasper felt he’d done to lower his value. He prided himself on being a gentleman and living by a gentleman’s code of conduct. For all intents and purposes, he had been true to that code.
‘When will you stop employing Socratic method and just say what you mean?’ Jasper asked, more curious than annoyed.
‘You are the philosopher. It seems a natural method to employ when I seek to make a point with you.’
‘Yes, well, sometimes the direct approach saves time.’
‘Ah yes, but does it achieve its end as effectively? I think not.
‘I must go to my wife. She may need my assistance in removing her heavy travelling apparel. It is a great pity that Howard Montgomery saw fit to ride to hounds in the middle of winter when the ice made such pursuits so dangerous. What was the man thinking, to risk himself that way when he had a lovely young wife at home waiting to keep him warm?’
Jasper considered this question closely. What would drive a man into the icy outdoors to pursue a fox, weak from poor pickings over the cold months? It was certainly the done thing by the gentry, and anyone who was anyone did so to be seen. But from all that he’d heard of Montgomery, he had been a slave to the pastime, putting aside all other activities for the pleasure of pursuing the outnumbered, unwitting victim.
He and all those at the Keep had more of an affinity with the fox than the hunters. Maybe Howard’s death was fair payment for his bloodthirsty predilections. But it did seem unfair that a young wife should have to pay for them, too, and because of her, that their Phil should have to suffer additional sadness.
‘A fox’s winter pelt is the prize,’ Jasper informed his friend, almost forgetting where their conversation had started.
‘Poor sport in my eyes. I am off to do my husbandly duties. I wonder if I will ever tire of them. It sometimes feels quite impossible that I was alone for so long. Now that Phil is here, it almost feels as if she has always been here.’
‘And yet the last nine months have flown by like the blink of an eye. I am happy for you, ‘Ron, you do know that, don’t you?’ Jas rose to put a hand on the other man’s shoulder.
A look of surprise and then guarded pleasure crossed Byron’s face. He cleared his throat and gave a brief nod. ‘I know. Thank you.’
Before the emotions flowing between them became more than either could comfortably handle, Byron turned on his heel and strode from the library. Jasper watched him depart with bemused envy. He knew what his friend and his wife would be doing for the next few hours.
Trying to turn his mind from such amorous thoughts, he sat down at the desk again. But his concentration was gone. Images of a welcoming female body filled his mind. Not Phil. He would never let his mind conjure such a picture. But an anonymous female, like so many he’d known in his younger years, all pretty and willing, providing the kind of pleasure that only fine whisky could equal.
He had known no such pleasures of the flesh for two and a half years. Not because he didn’t still have the urge. He did, more so than ever. But they knew so little about the condition. What if he could pass on his disease to a woman during sex? Who knew if he might lose all control of his wild side during the act and break her skin? They still didn’t know if the contagion could be passed at other times of the month. And because of that unknown, and because he didn’t believe he deserved the pleasures to be found in a willing female’s arms, he kept to a celibate life.
And as far as he knew, all the denizens of the Keep kept to that strict regime. They didn’t even form bonds amongst themselves beyond the superficial friendships based on shared interests. It was as if they each lived within their own lonely, isolated prison while sharing the physical space of their greater prison with each other
It was yet another way that he paid for his crime. And he imagined it was how the others saw it, too. He accepted it as his lot, just as he accepted all the rest.
CHAPTER THREE
It was mid-February, and just a little over a week since Phil had left her in Hertfordshire, when Fidelia arrived at the ancient ruin of Breckenhill Keep to pay a morning call. It was common etiquette to send notification of her imminent arrival, but she had wanted to surprise her friend. And Fidelia had a niggling sense that, given notice, Phil might have found a way to circumvent her visit.
Fidelia didn't know why she would do such a thing, but after their two weeks together, when she’d learned nothing additional about Phil’s new life and the mystery had seemed to only grow deeper with each passing day, it felt more and more like Phil was trying to protect her from something. There was a secret Phil was hiding that was eating her up alive.
Whatever the reason for her reluctance, Fidelia was determined to find out what trouble Phil was in, and help her overcome it if she could. She'd been doing just that for years, and it made her feel good to focus on someone else’s problems rather than her own. Phil called Fidelia her guardian angel but, in fact, it was the other way around. All Fidelia had been trying to do all these years was find a way to pay her friend back for her loyalty and protection during those early school days.
Phil still didn’t know the extent of Fidelia’s helping hand. That is was she who had convinced her parents to make a scholarship available at the Chelsea Ladies Academy that had allowed the newly impoverished Phil to continue her education after her father’s death. And that much of the popularity of Mrs Davenport’s lacework was due to Fidelia’s mother’s influence amongst the Ton. Because of that popularity, Philomena’s mother had been able to earn a sufficient amount to keep a roof over her head. It had not been enough, not nearly enough, as far as Fidelia was concerned. But Mrs Davenport had been fiercely opposed to charity and was suspicious of any money that came her way serendipitously. It had taken very convoluted routes to get her to accept even those few scraps to support herself and her daughter.
It still angered Fidelia to know that Phil could have lived a better life, if not for her mother’s pride and her father’s unwillingness to support his family. Even now, knowing Captain Davenport had not died in the Crimea, as reported, but had gone on to live a wealthy life, was incredibly galling to Fidelia. How could a man perpetrate such deception on those who loved him most?
So, if no one else had been willing to put Phil’s welfare first, she had. It was only what her brave and stalwart friend deserved, after all.
Of course, there had also been a much more pressing matter that drew her here at this time. One she didn’t allow herself to focus on. It turned her blood to ice just thinking about it.
As the horses came to a halt outside the ancient castle, Fidelia's first impressions of Breckenhill Keep were not favourable. The place was little more than a pile of stones hastily mortared back together after time and war had knocked them down. Although
Phil told her the place was no architectural masterpiece, she hadn't fully detailed the shambles it was in.
Once there had been a full castle wall that surrounded the Keep. What was left of that wall was still visible lower down the moorside. The Keep itself still stood, Norman in design – square, solid and towering. The castellated battlements had long since fallen away or been rounded off by time, but the slits of windows higher up the tower were still visible. It must have been a daunting structure in its day.
On either side of the central tower, generations of lords had made additions – a hodgepodge of styles that bore little similarity to each other except for the material used for the construction. The rough grey stones that littered the moors made perfect building material for such additions.
If she found her late husband's home dower and forbidding, this Keep was that and more. She couldn't imagine bright and spirited Philomena living in such austere surroundings.
‘Not exactly what I was expecting,’ she commented to Maude, her maid and companion.
The little old woman joined her for a moment at the window and shuddered. ‘No madam, not what you expected at all. It looks like nobody lives here. Could we have got it wrong? Maybe this isn’t Breckenhill Keep.’
‘Unfortunately, there can be no mistake. The coachman is local. He knew of the place the moment I told him where I wanted to go.’
‘Yes, madam,’ Maude whispered uncertainly, sitting back to await the cessation of movement that would announce their arrival.
Someone must have heard their approach because the front door, a great oak monstrosity that would have turned away an army with ease, was suddenly thrown open as their carriage came to a standstill. As she watched from the carriage window, a blond young man charged across the threshold and raced down the stairs toward them. He threw the carriage door open and lunged in, grabbing Fidelia roughly by the arm.
