She should have been prepared, of course, and her aunt had warned Sylvia that she would have to endure a period of open disdain from some of the more narrow-minded gentry. Particularly the females. As for the gentlemen, Sylvia had been pleasantly surprised at how accepting they had appeared. Several of the younger men had become assiduous callers at Whitecliffs, but it had been Sir Geoffrey Huntsville who had opened Sylvia’s eyes to the true nature of this masculine interest.
The baronet’s entirely unexpected offer to become more than her platonic admirer had been delivered with all the pompous assurance of one who had no doubt of her grateful acceptance. Sylvia could now smile at the memory of Sir Geoffrey’s outraged expression when he heard her disdainful set-down, but the experience had disabused her of any notion of finding a gentleman as understanding and loyal as her aunt’s paramour.
“Doucement, ma petite, ” Sylvia heard Giovanni murmur caressingly. “You mistake the matter, love. Do you not know your Giovanni better than to think such calumny? Besides, peccato is a relative term, is it not? For some—like your poor Mrs. Rawson, for instance—sin is an unpardonable transgression, a matter for the Devil himself; for others—”
“Such as yourself, I suppose,” his lady cut in with a laugh. “Tell us, you rogue. What is sin to you?”
“Certainly nothing that you are capable of, palomita mia, ” he replied soothingly. “But if you are uneasy on that score, I am sure the Reverend Rawson would be more than ready to oblige us if you were to decide—”
“To become respectable? Oh, no, you sly fox,” her aunt interrupted, hazel eyes dancing with amusement. “I will not listen to another of your homilies on the advantages of the married state. You are getting as tiresome as old Mrs. Rawson. Besides, after so many years of defying the local moralists, have we not earned the right to live as we choose, amor mio?"
“Precisament, cherie. And if we choose to become—as your quaint Mrs. Rawson puts it—respectable in the eyes of the world, who will say us nay?”
Giovanni reinforced this teasing remark by carrying his inamorata’s fingers to his lips and bestowing upon them a kiss so blatantly amorous that Sylvia averted her eyes.
Sylvia had witnessed this scene played out any number of times over the years she had been at Whitecliffs, but recently it seemed to her that the Italian sculptor had become increasingly serious in his desire to formalize his relationship with Lady Marguerite. Her aunt remained adamant in her refusal to cater to the gossips. Unnecessarily so, Sylvia had always thought.
She herself would have jumped at the chance to become respectable again. In truth, she often found herself wishing that Sir Matthew Farnaby had never appeared that fateful day at her father’s shooting party to beguile his daughter with false promises of love and never-ending happiness.
Sylvia wondered idly whether the handsome rogue had found some other heiress to mend his fortunes. Was he at this very moment surrounded by a doting wife and a loving family of little ones?
The picture was painful, and Sylvia brushed it aside impatiently.
At a staid eight-and-twenty, her lot was to lead apes to Hell, she reminded herself philosophically. Her work would sustain her. And was not the growing notice she had achieved in the London art world more precious to her than the uncertain loyalty of a husband?
For the first time in several years, the answer to that question did not sound as convincing as it usually did.
There was a light tap on the study door, and the earl glanced up, curious to hear his mother’s latest argument in favor of an early departure for London. His stem expression softened when his aunt’s rosy face peeped apprehensively into the room.
“I do not mean to disturb you, Nicholas,” she said, “but I promised to call at Whitecliffs this afternoon and wondered if I might ask John Coachman to drive me. Your dear mama has developed a megrim and has begged off.”
Nicholas laid down his quill and smiled. His Aunt Lydia was one of his favorite females and, he suspected, understood him far better than his own mother.
“I shall do better than that, Aunt,” he replied, suddenly glad of the chance to escape from the tedium of poring over estate ledgers with his agent. “I shall drive you over to Whitecliffs myself. I am in urgent need of fresh air since, thanks to Tom Gates, I missed my ride this morning.”
His aunt’s homely face lit up instantly. ‘That would be splendid, my boy, but I would not wish to put you to such a bother.”
“No bother at all, Aunt,” he said, rising to his feet and closing the heavy ledger. “Gates has abandoned me to ride up to Falmouth with a message for Ned Barker, my man of business. It appears Barker has received information that the Voyageur is to be put on the block next month, and is offering me first choice.”
“Yet another ship, Nicholas?” his aunt exclaimed, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “Now, can you tell me what you need with so many of those expensive toys? I would be hesitant to invest so much in a vessel that might sink at the merest quirk of fortune.”
Nicholas laughed. He enjoyed talking Trade with his aunt. Despite her seemingly frivolous remarks, Mrs. Hargate was as sharp as she could hold together. Nicholas had found over the years that her suggestions for the disposal of her substantial fortune—which the earl had managed since her second husband had passed on, leaving her unexpectedly well provided for—were surprisingly astute.
“We lost the Intrepid off the coast of Africa only last year, Aunt, and Jason has been urging me to replace her for months now. If she is sound, the Voyageur might meet Jason’s standards. Of course, I would want him to test her mettle first, so I hope he is not dawdling in some French port drinking cheap wine and getting into fisticuffs with the local thugs.”
“If I know anything about Jason Ransome, he will not be anywhere near cheap wine, my dear,” his aunt said. “I believe his tastes are rather more expensive. Which reminds me, Nicholas,” she added, veering suddenly to another topic as she often did, “there is something of importance I wish to discuss with you.”
From her tone of voice the earl guessed that the subject on his aunt’s mind was in one way or another related to her only remaining son, his notorious Cousin Matthew. He had received a disturbing note from Barker two days ago containing a detailed list of his cousin’s debts, which the careful solicitor had refused to settle.
He was not mistaken. No sooner had the earl’s curricle swept past the Longueville gatehouse and turned south towards Cury Cross and the Sutherland manor than his aunt poured out her latest tale of his cousin’s infamy.
“I fear my poor Matthew is in the suds again, Nicholas,” she confirmed in a serious voice. “I received a letter from him yesterday claiming that Mr. Barker has refused to advance him his monthly allowance, and has turned a deaf ear on Matthew’s repeated requests to increase the amount. He demands that I apply to you to override Barker’s stinginess unless I wish to see my son in Debtors’ Prison.”
The earl felt his pleasure in the fine morning dissipate. He had not laid eyes on Sir Matthew Farnaby for nearly ten years, but the indelible memory of their violent encounter in his study after Angelica’s funeral stirred simmering anger and bitterness in Nicholas’s heart.
The wretch had had the audacity to insinuate that Angelica was no more than a common slut.
Nicholas was better off without her, his cousin had said, a sneer marring the classic beauty of his face, as it all too often did when things did not go his way. There was no telling what dark scandals lurked in the future for a man saddled with an unpredictable, hotheaded female like the young Countess of Longueville. Unbridled passion was all well and good in a man’s mistress, but in a wife it boded only chaos and dishonor to the family.
Far better the lady had removed that threat of scandal by taking her own life, Matthew had remarked in that cold, callous way of his. Or that some particularly thoughtful friend had removed it for her, he had added, a sly, knowing smile twisting his shapely mouth into an ugly grimace.
Rumors
that his wife’s mysterious death had been neither suicide nor accident were already rampant in the neighborhood, Nicholas remembered. He and Sir Gerald Littlefield, magistrate from the adjacent borough and lifelong friend, had been hard pressed to convince the obdurate vicar that Angelica had every right to be interred in sacred ground.
He had been able to override local superstition, however, although not suppress it. But what had upset his peace of mind forever was his own cousin’s spiteful confirmation of a nagging doubt that had lodged in his mind ever since the dowager had complained to him that his new bride’s flirtatious ways went beyond the pale.
Unbridled passion? His cousin’s words had caused a deep and lasting laceration in his soul. How would Matthew know that Angelica’s passion was indeed unbridled, bordering on debauched?
Had his licentious cousin been in a position to know such intimate details about the countess? Angelica had undeniably flirted with Matthew. Quite shamelessly, as he recalled. But she had behaved with hardly less restraint with all the other gentlemen at Longueville that summer of 1804, single or married. With Jason Ransome, his best man. With Sir Geoffrey Huntsville, who fawned on her like the veriest spaniel. With the Brodley brothers, fresh down from Oxford and still bashful in the presence of a beautiful woman. With the Earl of St. Aubyn, who was very clearly absorbed with his own lovely countess. With that consummate rake, the Viscount Hammond, who had demonstrated admirable restraint with his friend’s new bride. Even with the genteel Mr. George Connan, the garrulous Mrs. Violet Rawson’s nephew, who had recently taken over the small bookshop in Helston left to him by his parents.
And all the others whose names escaped him.
“You are wool-gathering, Nicholas,” his aunt protested indignantly as the curricle turned into the gate guarded by the two stone lions. “While here I am facing the prospect of seeing my only son cast into prison for debt.”
The earl pulled his uneasy thoughts back from the past.
“It will hardly get to that, Aunt,” he assured her with more confidence than he felt. “I shall talk to Barker and see what we can work out. But remember that you promised not to squander another penny of your own on Farnaby. He has run through his father’s fortune, and he will run through yours if you give him half a chance. That I will not permit, Aunt, take my word on that.”
His aunt was silent for several minutes. When she spoke again, she broached a subject the earl had rather left undisturbed.
“Matthew is in Falmouth, you know. So close by. He wants to see me and begs me to visit him there.” She paused, then continued hesitantly. “Unless of course, dear, you might be persuaded to lift your ban on his visits to Longueville.”
When the earl made no response, she insisted. “Would you do so, my dear Nicholas? If I asked it of you?”
“No,” the earl replied harshly. “I would not. I am sorry to disoblige you, Aunt,” he added tersely, “but some things are best left buried.”
His choice of words was unfortunate, Nicholas realized, but also full of perverse irony. Angelica was indeed buried and, in spite of his almost obsessive infatuation with her during their brief marriage, he had—over the years—come to agree with his cousin’s conclusion that the passionate creature he had wed would one day bring disgrace to all of them.
She had done so already, he thought bitterly. Only yesterday he had heard the word murderer whispered behind his back in the village.
Ten years in India had not been enough to erase that stigma.
Chapter Six
Summer Beauties
The scene that greeted the visitors as Hobson led them down the shallow terrace steps and through the crisscrossed brick pathways might well have been recorded on canvas as Summer Beauties. The roses, growing in exuberant clumps of pinks and brilliant reds rather than the regimented rows of carefully pruned bushes Nicholas was accustomed to seeing in the manicured gardens at Longueville Castle, took the breath away.
He heard his aunt’s gasp of pleasure and surprise as the riot of color opened up before them. Nicholas could detect no recognizable pattern to the design of Lady Marguerite’s rose-garden, which appeared to have been scattered haphazardly like gaily tinted butterflies on the green turf.
“How enchanting!” his aunt murmured in an awed voice.
“The gardeners were surely in their cups when they laid out this planting,” the earl remarked dampeningly. “There is no hint of symmetry that I can ascertain.”
“Symmetry! Pooh!” his aunt exclaimed disdainfully. “Must you always insist on restraint and control, Nicholas? Even in the garden? Cannot you feel the harmony here? The freedom of it fairly vibrates in the air. Unlike those stiff rows of repressed rose-bushes one sees in too many gardens that look so uncomfortable in their conformity that one can only feel for them.”
The earl felt obliged to correct this fanciful female nonsense. “Since when can roses feel uncomfortable, Aunt?” he said, guiding her around a pot-bellied tub in the shape of a naked Cupid, overflowing with pink geraniums.
Mrs. Hargate ignored this indecorous intrusion of Eros into an English garden, and her attention had shifted to the group gathered around a particularly unruly cascade of startling pink blossoms.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I do believe we are interrupting a sitting, my dear boy. Perhaps we should make our apologies and return another day.”
Nicholas had to agree with his aunt, although he had no intention of retreating. The notorious couple, composed of Lady Marguerite and the Italian, whose presence at Whitecliffs still caused averted glances in the village even after twenty years, was arranged in a charmingly innocent pose on a wooden bench beneath a cascade of pink roses. Privately, Nicholas considered the pose more appropriate to young lovers than to a middle-aged couple whose obvious infatuation he found faintly embarrassing.
“What a very charming picture you do make,” he heard his aunt gush as they approached the party. “And what a rare treat to surprise the artist at work.”
The artist, whom the earl had instantly recognized by the pale gray of her simple gown, turned with obvious reluctance from the canvas before her and glanced over her shoulder.
Unaware that he had been holding his breath, the earl let it out slowly as the gray eyes slid over him and settled upon his aunt. Then she smiled, and the sweetness of it transformed Lady Sylvia’s guarded expression into one of genuine welcome.
“My dear Mrs. Hargate,” she said, moving across the grass to greet his aunt and draw her into the group beside the arching rosebushes. “I am so glad you were able to come. My lord,” she added less enthusiastically, but without the hostility of their previous encounters. She glanced behind them, as if expecting to see the dowager emerge from the open French windows.
“My mother sends her regrets,” Nicholas felt obliged to explain. “She is still exhausted from the sea voyage.”
Lady Sylvia looked into his eyes from beneath the floppy brim of her faded pink straw bonnet and smiled enigmatically. It was quite as though she had read his mind, Nicholas thought, and divined the real reason for the dowager’s absence. The notion that a mere female might find him so transparent annoyed him.
He frowned, and she looked away, the smile still on her lips.
“I trust we are not interrupting your work, my lady.” As usual his aunt appeared completely at home in the odd assembly.
“Nothing of the kind,” Lady Sylvia replied brightly. “My aunt has been fidgeting for the past twenty minutes, which is an unequivocal sign that it is time for tea.”
“Yes, indeed,” Lady Marguerite agreed, “Sylvia is a demanding taskmaster. If we left it to her, we would still be sitting here when the moon comes up. Hobson,” she added, turning to the butler, “you may have the tea-tray sent out, if you please. It is too glorious an afternoon to waste indoors.” She glanced at her companion. “Do you not agree, caro mio?"”
For answer the Italian ran a knuckle down the lady’s cheek, a gesture Nicholas found uncomfortably intimat
e. “Anything you say, bella, ” he said in the seductively low voice he invariably used with Lady Marguerite.
His hostess smiled meltingly up at her lover, and Nicholas wondered what it might be like to live twenty years with the same woman and still be able to kindle that spark of unabashed adoration in her eyes.
He felt the old bitterness swell up within him. Ten years ago he had seen a similar adoration in another woman’s eyes—or imagined he had—and that illusion had cost him dearly. Even today Nicholas had difficulty admitting that the delicate beauty of Angelica DeJardin was but an innocent facade behind which lurked the creature of unbridled passion his cousin had spoken of. A creature he himself had discovered in the privacy of her bedchamber.
“Are you ready for more tea, my lord?”
The earl dragged his thoughts back to the present to find Lady Sylvia regarding him quizzically. He had no recollection of having consumed any tea at all, but he passed his empty cup to her without comment.
As he watched her lift the ornate silver tea-pot and refill his cup, Nicholas briefly wondered what it might be like to sit across the breakfast table from such a vibrant female as this. Or better still, to share his bed with her. An absurd notion, of course, since the lady was clearly cut from the same cloth as her more flamboyant aunt. True, Lady Sylvia did not have a lover in residence as her aunt did, but there must have been one in the shadowy recesses of her past, if persistent rumors of her disgrace could be believed. Why else would a female of obvious breeding, fortune, and beauty live as a recluse in the wilds of Cornwall?
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