Her favorite fantasy, one that incorporated all the elements of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s more lurid novels—if Timmy’s occasional bursts of confidence held any truth to them—appeared to be shared by the local inhabitants. Perhaps because Sylvia could see herself in the love-bewitched lady whose white-clad figure had been seen—according to Timmy’s highly embellished version—flitting along the cliff path under the full moon, she had been fascinated by the tale. Not that she believed it, of course, smacking as it did of ignorance and superstition, and even of the fairy lore so dear to the hearts of country folk everywhere. But the image of the lonely lady seeking her lover intrigued her, and she had made many sketches of the imaginary scene, fully intending to create a full- sized portrait of the ghost-like figure on the cliff top.
The unpretentious little trap Sylvia occasionally used to transport her canvases stood beside the gorse bushes where she had left it that morning. Puffin, the shaggy pony whom she had learned to harness to the cart herself if she wished to get out of the stable- yard at a reasonable hour, stood nearby, flicking his long tail languidly, eyes closed drowsily.
“Still not awake, Puffin?” she remarked companionably to the animal. Sylvia could have sworn that the pony came fully conscious only on the way home, when the prospect of stable and oats loomed into sight.
Rufus whined, reminding her that it was well past their usual refreshment hour. Sylvia smiled to herself as she plucked the covered wicker basket from the trap, marveling once again at the changes she had undergone since her arrival at Whitecliffs ten years ago. Had anyone told her that she would spend a significant portion of her days out on the cliffs and desolate moors in the company of a rabbit-obsessed dog and a sleep-walking pony, she would have scoffed at the notion.
Settling herself on the plaid rug she used to protect herself from the tough, blade-sharp grasses, Sylvia removed the linen serviette from the basket and peered inside. Predictably, Rufus’s bone lay on top, and Sylvia had learned not to dally in presenting it to him. After that small but vital ritual was taken care of, she could enjoy her own meal, although her mind soon drifted back to the mysterious moonlight wanderer.
By mid-afternoon, when the slanting shadows had caused the stony cliff hut to recede once again into the rocky background, Sylvia had long since pronounced the painting complete and washed out her brushes. As she sat on enjoying the waning sunshine, the notion came to her that perhaps it was time to tackle the subject of that lonely lady in white.
An anxious growl from Rufus interrupted these pleasant thoughts. Thinking it was young Timmy come to help her harness the somnolent Puffin, as he often did, Sylvia paid no heed. It was the harsh voice that followed closely on die dog’s warning that made her whirl around, spilling the jelly-jar of turpentine on the hem of her skirt.
“Who gave you permission to trespass on my land?”
Raising her annoyed gaze from the oily stain spreading over the pale gray muslin of her gown, Sylvia was prepared to blister the intruder for his rudeness.
The sight of the man glowering down at her made the tart retort die in her throat.
She had never seen the gentleman before. Nor had she ever heard that the stretch of land between her aunt’s manor house, on the outskirts of the village of Cury Cross, and the sea belonged to any of the isolated estates of the local gentry.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, her voice icy. “I do not believe we have met.”
The gentleman—his attire if not his manners proclaimed him as one—smiled grimly. At least Sylvia deduced the grimace that twisted his harsh features was intended as a smile.
“A dull-witted, superfluous observation,” he snapped. “Of course we have not met. I do not favor redheaded ape-leaders of dubious breeding. All of which does not alter the fact that you are trespassing on my land, madam, and I must insist you leave instantly.”
The quite monstrous incivility of this response deprived Sylvia momentarily of breath. Never in her life had she been addressed in such deliberately offensive terms. Dubious breeding indeed! While it was certainly true that her muslin gown was several years out of fashion and a little the worse for wear, it was not the sort of garment worn by females existing in that unenviable state of genteel poverty. Or was it? she wondered, never having considered the matter before.
Ape-leader she would have to admit to, of course, but it was un- pardonably rude of him to mention a lady’s advanced years. And of course, there was no denying the flamboyant color of her hair. Sylvia had always considered it her crowning glory, and had been accustomed to having it greatly admired by the gentlemen of her acquaintance—before she fell from grace, she reminded herself quickly. It did not surprise her to hear this oafish rudesby malign it; he obviously lacked both discrimination and good taste.
Her first impulse was to give the jackstraw the blistering set- down he deserved, but a quick glance at the deserted cliffs reminded Sylvia that she was quite alone with a creature who was at best deranged, and quite possibly dangerous.
She forced herself to smile as at a contentious child.
“You are quite correct, sir,” she said sweetly, gathering her artist’s paraphernalia into its box. “I shall take your advice instantly.” She glanced up at the sky. “It must be nearly tea-time in any case,” she could not resist adding, just to show him that she had better things to do.
Sylvia was quite sure that Puffin was still dozing by the time she had him harnessed to the trap and turned towards Cury Cross. He stumbled once or twice on the rough terrain, but as soon as he realized they were on their way homewards, he blew the dust from his nostrils and put one hoof before the other in a purposeful manner.
The surly gentleman made no attempt to offer assistance, and Sylvia did not so much as glance at him.
Climbing into the little cart, she whistled to Rufus and gave Puffin a vigorous slap with the reins.
Glad to have escaped with nothing but a display of rudeness from the stranger, she did not once look back.
Nicholas Morley watched the little cart rattle away down the grass track towards the village. Not once did the fiery-haired occupant, her back rigid with indignation, glance behind her. Only the dog, perhaps sensing the man’s hostility, stopped to express his disapproval with a warning bark.
Long after the unknown artist had disappeared into the dip where the cliff track joined the main lane from the little port of Mullion to the village of Cury Cross, Nicholas stood rooted to the spot, his mind flooding with memories he had thought buried by years of exile.
He had not intended to come up here to the cliff this afternoon. Nicholas could not explain the morbid fascination that had directed his steps to the one place on his estate that he most wished to avoid. Perhaps the unresolved mystery of what had happened here still haunted him, he thought. Perhaps he had hoped to discover—looking back with clearer, wiser eyes at that horrifying event that had changed his life forever—the answers that had eluded him, eluded them all, on that summer evening long ago.
If truth be told, he had not wanted to return to Longueville Castle at all. Had not his mother, her health failing in the harsh climate in Calcutta, begun to talk with nostalgia of joining her husband in the family cemetery, Nicholas might still be in India.
He had thrived there, expanding, with an acumen he had not known he possessed, the small trading company he had established in Falmouth on a youthful wager long before he inherited his title. The risk of being ostracized by the haut monde for his association with Trade deterred Nicholas not a whit. On the contrary, the tainted nature of dabbling in such ventures increased their allure for a bored young buck whose generous allowance seemed to be perpetually incapable of covering his needs. Besides which, the knowledge that his father would be livid if he discovered his heir rubbing elbows with the merchant class gave an unholy piquancy to the adventure.
With a sigh the earl turned back towards the coast. He had left his horse at the Pirate’s Cove inn at Mullion early that afternoon, and o
n impulse struck out along the cliff towards the hidden cove from which the inn derived its name. Now he wished he had accepted old Bill Bates’s offer of a tankard of local ale instead. He would have been spared the shock and unpleasantness of his meeting with the red-haired female.
His behavior had been execrable. The virulence of his response to the strange female had surprised him, and Nicholas was relieved when she chose not to argue with him, but took off in a flurry of outrage, wisps of red hair escaping from beneath her wide- brimmed straw hat. Her parting remark about it being tea-time was a deft set-down, he realized belatedly. A reminder that there was somewhere else she would rather be.
It was the kind of remark Angelica had been so fond of using.
Nicholas was thankful he had not seen it sooner; he might well have compounded his inexplicable rudeness with physical violence. The thought alarmed him. Was he indeed capable of such violence against a female? All those years ago people had seemed to think so. His neighbors, his tenants, his London friends, his relatives, the local magistrate, and most certainly the villagers. All but his mother had believed him capable—although none had dared to say so openly—of the most violent physical crime a man might commit against his wife.
In spite of the warm sun on his bare head, Nicholas shuddered. He had thought those soul-wrenching doubts overcome and buried in his past, together with the bitter memories of betrayal and heartache. But the sight of that lone female figure sitting on the cliff before the familiar easel had resurrected every one. For one agonizing moment the past had crowded into his consciousness— that solitary artist had become her. His heart had leaped into his throat, and he experienced a nostalgic joy that evaporated before it was fully formed.
Before he could control it, the violence set in. As he strode towards the solitary figure, Nicholas felt his hands curl into fists, his fingers itch to coil around that slender white neck, his heart fill with fury and bitterness at her betrayal. When he had come up behind her and seen the infamous stone hut depicted so blatantly on the canvas, he had felt his control slipping, his latent violence roiling inside him.
Then he had seen the red hair.
The sight of the hair had abruptly diffused his anger, leaving him confused, hostile, needing to lash out to relieve the tightness in his chest. So he had taken refuse in rudeness, in unspeakable, uncharacteristic remarks that he regretted now that it was too late to retrieve them.
Unable to stop himself, Nicholas walked to the edge of the cliff and gazed down the steep, rocky steps at the stone hut. It had not changed in the years he had been away. Still squat and menacing, it clung to the cliff like an evil excrescence, a canker that had eaten away at the heart of his marriage, destroyed her just as surely as he himself had been destroyed by the events that had occurred here.
Impatiently, the earl swung away from the cliff and strode in the direction of Mullion. He would retrieve Arion from the Pirate’s Cove and go home. Home? Nicholas wondered if Longueville Castle would ever seem like home again. Perhaps if he never came this way again. Perhaps if he could forget this whole unfortunate incident when, for a devastating moment, he had thought she had come back to haunt him.
The notion of being haunted was patently ridiculous, of course, but he had already heard rumors—spread by the superstitious villagers no doubt—of a wandering figure on the cliff tops. He would have to put a stop to such nonsense immediately, he told himself. The only wandering figure he would acknowledge was the female in gray with red hair. And he had effectively banished her from interfering in his life.
Much later, as he came in sight of the church spires of Helston outlined against the late afternoon sky, it occurred to Nicholas that perhaps he owed the lady in gray an apology. After all, she had, momentarily at least, chased that other spectral wanderer from his mind.
Chapter Two
The Lady in Gray
The open landau creaked ominously as it swung between the stone pillars that guarded the entrance to Whitecliffs, the Tudor manor house inherited by its present owner, Lady Marguerite Sutherland, from her grandmother. The pillars, topped by weather-beaten lions staring out fiercely at the distant sea, reminded Nicholas of his childhood. How many times, he wondered nostalgically, had he hesitated in the lane before urging his pony through the gates at breakneck speed to avoid the fulminating glare of those hard gray eyes?
“When we go up to London in October, Nicholas, you must see about ordering a new carriage from Hatchett’s,” his mother remarked as the landau bowled unsteadily up the driveway, lined with ancient lime trees. “This poor thing was old in your grandmother’s time.”
The earl’s attention shifted abruptly back to the present. “Are we going to London in October?” he drawled, recognizing his mother’s favorite gambit for introducing plans she knew he would dislike. “That is the first 1 hear of it, Mama. I was under the impression that we had only recently returned home from India.”
The Dowager Countess of Longueville glanced up at him coyly from beneath her elegant parasol and smiled sweetly, seemingly unaffected by the earl’s gentle sarcasm. “I am well aware of that, my dear boy,” she said. “After so many weeks cooped up in that stuffy cabin, I am grateful to be able to breathe fresh Cornish air again. But we must not disregard the future, Nicholas. Your aunt and I have decided it is high time you took your place in society
again.” The dowager cast an encouraging glance at the third occupant of the carriage, “Is that not so, Lydia?”
Mrs. Lydia Hargate nodded vigorously in agreement, as Nicholas had anticipated. In the six years since the death of her second husband, his amiable, self-effacing aunt had never, to his knowledge, contradicted her more assertive relative in anything. The earl had always found this passivity mildly annoying, because he had long ago recognized that his Aunt Lydia was possessed of far more common sense than his mother. She might be counted upon to take charge, quietly but efficiently, in any disaster.
As she had with Angelica. With his brother Stephen, lost at Talavera. And still further into the tragic past, with the sudden death of her own eldest son, his cousin Luke. It was no coincidence that, after being widowed for a second time, his aunt had joined the Morleys in India at the earl’s urging. “You belong with us, Aunt,” he had told her and meant it. What he had not confessed was that she seemed to be the only one able to hold what was left of his crumbling family together. He needed her quiet strength more than he cared to admit. He always had.
It was to Aunt Lydia he had appealed, close to tears, the evening before his mother’s thirtieth birthday, he remembered. He still recalled the overwhelming grief he had felt when he discovered the small brooch, painstakingly chosen and secretly purchased at Falmouth, missing from its hiding place. His unflappable aunt had clasped him to her ample bosom and suggested that the gift was merely misplaced, not lost. Nicholas had believed her, as he always had.
After the family had retired, Aunt Lydia appeared in his room with the missing brooch. He had come to her room before dinner to show off his prize; did he not remember? she explained in her matter-of-fact voice.
Nicholas had believed her again. Why should he not? It was years later, long after the incident should have been forgotten, that it dawned upon him that the missing brooch was perhaps the first in an endless list of peccadilloes—he had not called them anything stronger until much later—that could be traced directly to his cousin Matthew.
The earl had not consciously thought of his cousin in years. There were too many unanswered questions about Matthew Farnaby that did not bear close examination. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of returning home to England was that Nicholas would eventually have to face his flamboyant, debonair cousin again. For the present, however, he preferred to ignore the existence of Sir Matthew Farnaby.
He turned to smile at his aunt. “Am I to believe that you are anxious to spend a fortune on fripperies and throw yourself into the social whirl of London, Aunt?” he demanded teasingly. “I never would have g
uessed it.”
“You are being absurd, as usual, Nicholas,” his aunt replied with her characteristic calm. “When have you seen me pining for the delights of the haut monde, such as they are? ’Tis true I enjoy the theater, and musical soirees can be relaxing, but—”
“Do not pretend you did not like visiting the silk bazaars in Calcutta, my dear Lydia,” the dowager interrupted, as she invariably did whenever she felt herself excluded from the center of the conversation. “1 fail to understand why you would only pack two bolts of silk for your own use. Heaven knows when we shall ever see Calcutta again.”
“I thought you could not wait to shake the dust of India from your feet, Mama,” the earl remarked mendaciously. “I distinctly remember you saying that—”
“Do not, I beg you, Nicholas, be constantly reminding me of what I said,” the dowager interrupted pettishly. “How am I supposed to remember? And besides, have I not the right to change my mind? You must admit that those silk bazaars are fascinating places. I never could make up my mind which colors suited me best.”
“So you bought one of each, no doubt,” the earl mocked her gently, fully aware of his mother’s weakness for clothes.
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