Hope (The Daughters of Allamont Hall Book 6)

by Mary Kingswood

  “You do not trust him? After what he did for us?”

  “I am very grateful,” she said firmly. “Nothing will take away from the unselfish goodness of Frank’s actions last night, but…”

  “But?”

  “He told us that Ernest forced him onto a ship. And Ernest told almost the exact same tale of Frank. They cannot both be telling the truth.”

  “Well now, we have one brother who tried his hardest to destroy us, and one who restored everything with the utmost generosity, and at great personal risk. I know who I am inclined to believe.”

  “One good brother and one evil brother? Perhaps it may be so. But very few people are entirely good or entirely evil. Ernest may be more evil than not, but Frank is not so good as to be above cheating his way to a fortune. The fact that he gives it away afterwards does not absolve him of the crime, or avoid the censure that ought to be heaped upon him. For myself, I wish him well but I should need to know him a little better before I would trust him completely. You remember all the IOUs and promissory notes he won from Ernest?”

  “He returned them all.”

  “He returned the ones from the family. The rest are in his pocket still, and he made no attempt to find out the direction of those who signed them. So do not let your gratitude overwhelm your good sense, husband. Frank left here a good deal richer than he arrived.”

  “Do you know, Mrs Allamont, I believe you are turning into a very wise woman. Just one more reason for me to love you so much.”

  She blushed shyly. “As I love you, Hugo. Is it not wonderful how happily everything has turned out? We entered into this marriage with no expectations of ever being more to each other than friends and yet… here we are!”

  “Here we are indeed,” he said softly, cupping her face in his hands. “I only married you because of the house, and now I find that the house is nothing to me, except as a setting for your many perfections. You bring me such joy, my sweetest Hope.”

  “Oh, Hugo!” Her blushes deepened. “You pay me such lovely compliments. But the house is not nothing to me, for now you are Mr Allamont of Allamont Hall and that brings me immense pleasure.”

  “Ah, my little wife! And you are Mrs Allamont of Allamont Hall, and together we shall fill these rooms with love and laughter and vast numbers of charming children.”

  “Oh yes, and Hugo…” She lowered her head demurely. “I do believe that that part of your delightful vision may already be in progress. Oh Hugo, put me down! I shall be so dizzy! Hugo!”

  He laughed, and set her gently back on her feet, and kissed her again and again. Then, with a sigh, he said, “I shall take very good care of you, my little wife. And now, shall we go and find our guests? For as master and mistress of Allamont Hall, we have a reputation for hospitality to maintain.”

  Taking her hand in his, he led her into the drawing room.

  24: Epilogue

  Henry Allamont sat at the breakfast table watching his wife spread butter on her bread. Such beautiful hands she had — so smooth and white, the skin still unblemished. She looked up at him, and rewarded him with that warm smile.

  “So, my lady, how do you find Bath?”

  “I find it very wet,” she said, turning to the rain-lashed windows. “Does this rain ever stop? Shall I ever be able to poke my nose out of doors without becoming drenched instantly? It is fortunate that we are well supplied with amusements indoors.”

  That made him laugh. “True enough. We have not been bored, have we, my love? But what say you to moving on? Brighton, perhaps? Or London?”

  “Not London,” she said firmly. “That is my sister’s territory, and it might be confusing to have two of us running around town.”

  “Well, what about your family? Hepplestone or Tambray? You are still welcome there, are you not?”

  “They tolerate me, no better than that.”

  “How about Scotland, then? I should like to see Mark again, and you must want to find out how Dulcie is getting on. We could pay a visit to your sister Caroline, and have a little peek at our son.”

  “No, no, no! That would be a dreadful thing to do, when hardly anyone knows the truth of that little matter. It would be too awkward altogether.”

  “I suppose if we wanted to make nuisances of ourselves, we could invite ourselves to stay with Connie and the marquess,” he went on. “Probably it is best to stay away from Brinshire for a while until we can be sure that Maud is quite forgotten about, but Drummoor is far enough away. Or we could find a place of our own — what do you say to a trim little cottage somewhere in the country, but not too far from a town?”

  “That I should like to do, sometime, but not yet,” she said. “For the moment, I am enjoying my freedom.”

  “I am sure you are,” he said softly.

  She must have caught something in his tone, for she set down her bread and looked at him quizzically. “I am, yes. I have been restricted for far too long.”

  “A restriction of your own making, though, eh, Tilly?”

  There was a long silence, as she stared at him, her breathing rapid.

  “How long have you known that I was not Sara?”

  “Known? Not long. I suspected something odd was going on long ago, when you rushed to poor Vivienne’s side when she was ill. That was something Sara would never have done. And then you were so unexpectedly friendly towards me. Sara had always been so cold, like one of those waterfalls that freeze solid in a cold winter — exquisitely beautiful but ice to her very core. Yet there she was, as it seemed, holding my hand, offering me kisses and more. That was not like the Sara I had known for so many years. And then sometimes the icy Sara was back, just as distant and elusive as ever. It was very confusing.”

  “I imagine it must have been,” she said mildly. “I had no idea there was so much difference between us.”

  “But I did not know until that night of the gambling, when Frank turned up, and you did not recognise him.”

  “No one recognised him!”

  “True enough, although his mother perhaps might have done. But then when he was telling us all about himself, you cried. When did Sara ever cry? She was closed up too tight for such a show of emotion. But you — you cried tears of real joy, and I knew for certain that you were not Sara. Then everything fell into place. Why you avoided meeting the first false Ernest, and kept away from the real one. You even said once that he was no son of yours, and that was no less than the truth!” He chuckled, thinking back on the moment. “You must have been changing places for a while.”

  “Yes, ever since she revealed… her little venture in Shropshire. She told you of it, recently, and your advice was the same as mine — it was too close to home, and sooner or later it would get her into trouble. But it was like an addiction with her, so I suggested she come to London and play about in my brothel, pretending to be me, for I had no reputation left to lose.”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “Oh, you disapprove?” She gave a tinkling laugh. “I had to have some way to support myself after I was left alone. All terribly discreet, a safe place for a gentleman wishing to relax with a pretty young lady for a few hours, and I looked after those girls, Henry. I taught them elocution and deportment and proper manners, I dressed them nicely and several of them made good marriages as a result, and became respectable matrons in provincial towns. Is that not delicious? It was a very exclusive establishment, my little brothel, and the best of it was that I never needed to… participate myself, so to speak. But Sara… That was how Sara got into that game, you know, when she first stayed with me in London after William died. She wanted to try all that she had been missing. So, from time to time, she would go to London and be Tilly, and I would go to Brinshire and be the so-respectable Lady Sara Allamont. And I loved it! She found it tediously dull, but to me it was a novelty, and I adored those girls, and being part of a family.” She sighed. “Such a delight.”

  “How on earth did you manage? So many people who knew you well, yet you had
never met them. It must have been extraordinarily difficult, and no one suspected, I believe. Certainly your behaviour — well, in private, perhaps, there were noticeable differences, to me at least, but in company you did everything as she would have done.”

  “It was not so difficult. She had always written long, detailed letters to me, telling me about everyone. Not William — she never mentioned him — and very little about the children, but the neighbours, the people of Brinshire, those I knew all about. And when callers came, they were announced, so I always knew who they were. The assemblies were quite a challenge, but I enjoyed puzzling it out. The elderly lady who dressed like a debutante could only be the Baroness, for example. The military men were easy. One can get by in society, I found, by reading the degree of deference in a person’s greeting and their style of dress, and saying as little as possible.” She laughed, he face alight with mischief. “It was such fun, Henry! We became adept at switching over in Brinchester, to reduce the time away from the Hall. As for anyone suspecting, people see what they expect to see. I wore my sister’s gowns, I looked like her and moved like her — I even had her voice. Why should anyone suspect? Except you. I rather wanted you to see through it and understand.”

  “That is obvious now. Yes, you were so different with me, quite unlike Sara. I was very obtuse, I believe, not to have guessed it a great deal earlier.”

  She laughed merrily. “Indeed you were obtuse, for I gave you every opportunity to work out what we were about, and was happy to wait until you did so. Then we could perhaps have sat down, all three of us, and worked out what was best to be done. But then life got rather too warm in Brinshire, and you were circling round talking about marriage, and we had to decide in a great hurry what we would do.”

  “You decided well.”

  “Is that truly your opinion? You were so angry when you believed you had been tricked all those years ago. Why are you not angry now?”

  “I was a foolish young man, then. My pride was injured, such that I could not bear the thought that you two were laughing at me. The years have taught me humility… and patience, I hope. My dear, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that you chose to marry me. I would have accepted any arrangement of your choosing, as you are aware, but this is perfect.”

  “Oh, I so much wanted to. She wanted my life and I badly wanted hers. It is understandable, is it not? She has been caged for years and now wants only to be free, to be herself and not be controlled by any man. Whereas I… I have had my fill of freedom, Henry. In this censorious society we live in, a woman may enjoy her freedom but only at a terrible cost. A man may do as he pleases, and be thought a fine fellow indeed, but heaven forbid that a woman should set one embroidered slipper over the line of propriety. As Grace almost discovered. Poor Grace! And Sara must accept some of the blame for that. Just as she was relishing her freedom from William’s domination, so too were her daughters, and Sara would have done nothing about it if I had not forced her. Luckily, a cousin of Lord Carrbridge’s is one of my… erm, acquaintance, shall we say, and I prevailed upon him to write and ensure that the marquess went to the assembly to rescue Grace from ignominy. After that, we agreed that it would be better for everyone if she had the freedom she craved and I became the respectably widowed Lady Sara Allamont. Oh, the pleasure of being part of society again! You can have no idea, Henry. And so… here we are.”

  He said nothing.

  She reached across the table to take his hand. “Everything I have said to you, everything I have done has been from the heart, Henry, I want you to know that. I truly love you, and I will be the best wife I can to you. But I shall quite understand if you feel betrayed. I know I should have told you before we were married, but I was terrified that it was only her that you wanted, and you would not feel the same about ramshackle Tilly, the whore of London.”

  He smiled, and placed his other hand on hers. “I knew before we were married, so you did not deceive me. Once I knew, I was intrigued and… well, flattered, I suppose. Besides, you have always been so warm and generous. I would have had to be made of stone not to respond to that. When you first came to my bed at Willowbye, when poor Vivienne was so ill, I think I knew in my heart that you were not Sara, even then. With Sara, I loved her for so long because of the memory of the loving, free-spirited girl I knew all those years ago. She was lost to me, destroyed by a man who locked away all her spirit and beat the ability to love out of her. Yet here, by some miracle, I have her back again, unchanged, undamaged, as perfect as she ever was.”

  Her smile was all the reply he needed.

  “There is something I must show you,” she said softly, withdrawing her left hand from his and laying it, palm upwards, on the table. “Do you see this scar here?”

  “This one?” He traced the jagged white line across her open hand. “It must have been a painful injury.”

  “It was. My last lover did that to me, in a drunken rage one night. That injury was what persuaded me to leave him, and not to put my trust in a man’s protection again. For a while, life was… difficult. But I recovered, and now this knife-wound shall be the symbol of a new beginning, one of complete honesty, my love. For if ever you are in the slightest doubt about which of us you are with, you may look at this scar and know that you are with your Tilly. As I shall always be.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “My dearest, dearest love. Thank you. You honour me beyond measure by entrusting yourself to me. But I shall continue to call you Sara, if you do not mind. Otherwise, I should be bound to slip sometime, and that would be fatal. We must never allow anyone to suspect.”

  “I think perhaps our overwhelming happiness might arouse suspicions amongst those who know my sister well.”

  “Then we shall avoid them,” he said grandly. “We can go anywhere we like, now that we are rich. Or rather, you are rich. My eighty pound inheritance would not get us very far, I think. Where would you like to go, my love?”

  “Bath will do very well for the present, especially if it should ever stop raining. Might we take a house here for a while? I shall get bored of it in time, for Bath is very tame, I think, but I should like to set up my own establishment for a while. My own respectable establishment. Lady Sara Allamont of Bath — that sounds very well, does it not, my dear?”

  “It sounds perfect,” Henry said.

  THE END

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  This is the end of The Daughters of Allamont Hall. The series is the culmination of an idea I had almost two years ago while I was a passenger on a long and very boring car journey. Once I had dreamt up the obsessively regular Mr William Allamont, I wondered what life would be like with such a man. I had one example in my own family: my father was called Ernest, and his siblings (Constance, Amy and Frank) were likewise named after desirable traits. It wasn’t hard to add Belle, Dulcie, Grace and Hope to the list (where I stopped, quite unable to think of a suitable name beginning with an ‘I’ – or perhaps I took pity on poor Lady Sara!). Then I wanted to see what would happen if such a man died, because of course he wouldn’t be able to resist controlling his family even from the grave.

  So I set out to find out, and The Daughters of Allamont Hall is the result. But sometimes the characters in books take on a life of their own and surprise even the author. When Amy chose Mr Ambleside, and I discovered that Belle was falling in love with Mr Burford, I realised I had a pattern developing. So Connie fell for the Marquess of Carrbridge, Dulcie married Mr Drummond, Grace paired up with George Graham and Hope married Hugo Allamont. How perfect! And those of you who’ve read the free novella about Mary know who she will eventually end up with. But I had a problem. Henry Allamont was determined to marry Lady Sara, whose name has no matching ‘H�
�� (and having the same surname already was a bit of a cheat, it seemed to me). But then the sisters surprised me, and Henry married not Sara but – the Lady Matilda Heatherington. That’s Heatherington with an ‘H’. I can’t tell you how pleased I was with this serendipitous solution.

  All six Allamont sisters are now happily married, but not all members of their extended families are so satisfactorily situated, so there are lots more stories to come about some of the characters you’ve already met, as well as plenty of new faces. Coming later in 2017, watch out for a new series, Sons of the Marquess, in which Connie’s husband, Lord Carrbridge, discovers that he’s been living beyond his means for years. But Connie has a plan to save them: all her husband’s expensive younger brothers must be married off to heiresses. She relishes the challenge of matchmaking, but not all of them are willing to be paired off, or to give up their idle lives to find employment. Book 1 of the series is Lord Reginald and you can read a sneak preview of chapter 1 after the acknowledgements. And yes, I suspect Reggie may well marry a lady whose name begins with an ‘R’.

  A note on historical accuracy: I have endeavoured to stay true to the spirit of Regency times, and have avoided taking too many liberties or imposing modern sensibilities on my characters. The book is not one of historical record, but I’ve tried to make it reasonably accurate. However, I’m not perfect! If you spot a historical error, I’d very much appreciate knowing about it so that I can correct it and learn from it. Thank you!

  About The Daughters of Allamont Hall: a series of six traditional Regency romances, featuring the unmarried daughters of Mr William and Lady Sara Allamont. When their father dies unexpectedly, his will includes generous dowries for the sisters, but only on condition that they marry in the proper order, the eldest first.