The Lady in Gray

by Patricia Oliver

  Sylvia attempted a giggle, but her heart was not in it. “1 am not really crying, Aunt. It was just such a shock, you see. I never expected to see him again. That is, I did not expect him to find me down here.”

  “By him I assume that Giovanni was right; it was that cowardly brute from the past, was it not? But that was all so long ago, darling. What could he possible do now to upset you? Surely you do not still harbor a tendre for the scoundrel. You cannot be so foolish; I simply will not permit it.”

  “Oh, no, Aunt,” Sylvia assured her. “But you see . . . Well, everything is so complicated now. I thought that perhaps ... But now it is utterly impossible.” She made a hopeless gesture with one hand. “That wretch has ruined everything.” She heard her voice catch. “I cannot believe that he has made me miserable all over again.”

  “I cannot and will not believe that things are as desperate as you paint them, dearest,” Lady Marguerite said firmly. “Perhaps you had better tell me the whole, Sylvia. Who is this man who ruined you and now threatens your happiness all over again?”

  Sylvia shuddered with sudden apprehension. What her aunt said was true. Her happiness—or at least the little she had enjoyed in a certain gentleman’s company—would be damaged beyond repair if Sir Matthew moved back to the Castle.

  “You will never guess, Aunt,” she replied. “In truth, I could hardly believe it myself when I found out who he is related to and the extent of his iniquities. Here,” she added, pulling the recent letter from her pocket and handing it to her aunt, “perhaps you had best read it for yourself. Then I will show you another, written ten years ago under very different circumstances. One that broke my heart afresh, if you must know the truth.”

  There was silence in the room as Lady Marguerite perused the baronet’s letter. Sylvia held her breath. When her aunt had read the missive through for the second time, Sylvia realized that she had yet to make the connection between the writer of the letter and a man she must certainly have met years ago at the Castle.

  “Matthew?” Lady Marguerite murmured half to herself. She looked at her niece with a puzzled frown. “Surely this Matthew cannot be ...” She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening as comprehension dawned. “And I cannot believe he had the effrontery to approach you with another offer of marriage. Marriage, of all things! After the way he treated you, Sylvia. The man is beyond despicable.”

  Sylvia smiled grimly. “Oh, but he is, Aunt. The very same Matthew Farnaby whom you already know as cousin to the Earl of Longueville. And as for his renewed offer, the rogue’s arrogance is such that I imagine he expects me to jump at the chance. 1 swear it must have been the purest coincidence that I never even heard his name mentioned in the village all these years.”

  “That is because he is persona non grata at the Castle, dear,” her aunt responded. “He had a terrible set-to with the earl shortly after the poor countess’s death, and was forbidden to set foot on the estate again. Nicholas forbade his cousin’s name to be mentioned in these parts. Nobody—not even our loquacious busybody Mrs. Rawson—has ever been able to discover why.”

  “/ know why,” Sylvia admitted in a low voice, wishing she did not. Lady Marguerite stared at her as Sylvia showed her aunt the letter Danny Collins had been holding all these years, then revealed the earl’s news about the unborn child.

  “We must assume from this letter,” said Aunt Marguerite in a shocked voice, “that she did betray her husband. How else would Sir Matthew know about the countess’s condition? It is not something a woman would confide to a casual acquaintance. And who was the father of the poor wee mite?”

  “That is something we will probably never know, Aunt,” Sylvia replied, thinking that in the young countess Sir Matthew had found a woman as immoral as himself. “I do know, however, that the earl had no idea he was to be a father,” she added, remembering the anguish in those dark eyes as he told her about his wife’s condition.

  “The poor boy!” her aunt exclaimed. “What a terrible shock it must have been to discover, all these years later, that the wife he adored-—and you may take my word for it, Sylvia, Nicholas doted on the silly chit—was carrying a babe that quite possibly was not his.”

  Sylvia could find nothing adequate to say to this.

  Suddenly, Lady Marguerite jumped to her feet and started pacing up and down before the hearth. Sylvia knew her aunt well enough to see that the lady’s comfortable nature had been seriously unsettled.

  “I do trust you will not even consider granting this monster the interview he seeks, Sylvia,” Lady Marguerite said sternly. “I give you credit for more sense than to succumb to such a ploy. The wretch has no shame! He will not be received here, I can tell you that, love. I shall have Hobson throw him out if he so much as dares to knock on my door.”

  Sylvia smiled at the notion of their sedate, portly butler embroiled in fisticuffs with an unwelcome visitor. “I doubt he will call unless I answer his note,” she remarked, “which I have no intention of doing, of course,” she added hurriedly, seeing her aunt’s angry retort trembling on her lips.

  The arrival of the butler—blissfully unaware of the violence his mistress expected of him—bearing a carefully prepared tray of tempting delicacies and a pot of steaming tea caused Lady Marguerite to snap her mouth shut, but as soon as the door closed behind Hobson, she vented her indignation.

  “I should hope not, indeed,” she snapped, thoroughly worked up into a fury of indignation. She glanced down at the paper in her hand. “I gather he is racked up at the Pirate’s Cove Inn in Helston. I can only guess at the rumors that must be flying around the village. That old gossip Mrs. Rawson must be in her element, reviving all those ancient accusations against Nicholas.”

  “I do not believe that the earl had anything to do with his wife’s death,” Sylvia said, aware that her intuition had not deserted her. “Is it not far more likely that his cousin had a hand in it?”

  She heard her aunt let out a soft gasp.

  “Are you suggesting that Farnaby was with the countess the night of her death?” Her aunt’s voice was filled with dawning horror.

  “I know he was there,” Sylvia announced bluntly.

  “Then you must believe he may have caused her accident?”

  Sylvia drew a deep breath before she replied.

  “Either that or her murder,” she said slowly. “For whatever it was, the countess’s death was certainly not suicide.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Ball

  “I doubt you heard a word I said, Nick.”

  Startled out of his reverie by the note of exasperation in Jason’s tone, Nicholas glanced across at his friend and grinned.

  “You are off the mark there, old man,” he drawled. “You have done nothing but talk trading routes, provisions, and crew ever since we left Falmouth. I heard every word. Several times, in fact,” he added dryly.

  “Then tell me what you really think about expanding our routes to include China. I realize that Indian spices and silks are in constant demand in London, and you have made a fortune with this merchandise, but now that we have a faster ship, I think we should—”

  “Unless I am mistaken, my friend, you have acquired a comfortable fortune yourself over the years as master of the Scavenger, and now that you are part owner of the Voyageur, you are about to acquire considerably more. In a few years I expect to see you settling down on some tidy little estate surrounded by a horde of wild, red-haired rapscallions.” He paused, then added in a different tone, “And perhaps a lovely red-haired wife to complete the picture.”

  Nicholas could not explain what prompted him to introduce this obvious reference to Lady Sylvia into the conversation. The last thing he wanted was to tum Jason Ransome’s thoughts towards matrimony with that particular red-haired lady. But some inner compulsion drove him to probe his friend’s intentions. Some urgency he did not fully understand—did not wish to admit—drew

  him to suspect the easy familiarity Jason shared with the lady might h
ide a deeper attachment.

  Jason stared at him, and Nicholas noticed that his friend’s eyes held a hint of laughter in them.

  “Never fear, Nicky m’lad,” the captain said, a grin breaking across his handsome face. “I am not yet ready to leave the seafaring life, so rest assured I have no thoughts of offering for any female, red-haired or otherwise. Besides,” he added, his grin broadening, “I would not dare to trespass on your preserves, old boy.”

  For some inexplicable reason Jason’s last remark made Nicholas uncomfortable. “You are mistaken if you think I have any special claim on Lady Sylvia,” he said stiffly.

  Jason looked surprised. “I beg your pardon, then,” he responded. “I seem to remember that not too long ago you had some very specific plans for the lady.”

  “Then you remember wrong,” the earl lied. “And I will thank you not to mention it again.”

  Jason laughed good-naturedly. “Ah, now I see what ails you, lad. The lady has refused your offer of protection, I take it?”

  “Wrong again,” Nicholas snapped. “No such offer was made.”

  After a short pause, Jason said in a more serious tone, “You cannot know how glad I am to hear you say so, Nicholas. As I have said before, I think the lady deserves much better from you. If I were a marrying man myself, I would not hesitate to step into parson’s mouse trap, but I am a sailor at heart, and sailors make poor husbands.”

  They fell silent until their horses crested a rise and came upon the sight of Longueville Castle, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea near the small fishing village of Mullion. As always, the sight of his ancestral home affected Nicholas deeply. He could understand how the original French invader, Baron Morlaix, must have felt upon getting his first glimpse of the fortress that had been bestowed upon him by the Conqueror.

  Modified by generations of Morleys, the Castle had slowly acquired the appearance and comfort of a gentleman’s residence on the inside, but from the outside, his home had lost none of that medieval grandeur and impregnability of a fortress. Nicholas felt humbled every time he gazed upon its eight-foot stone walls, turrets, fluttering pennants, and battlements still scarred by enemy arrows.

  Jason’s words rang in his ears as the two friends cantered under the huge stone arch that had once given access to the moat and wooden drawbridge that led into the fortress proper. The drawbridge was long gone, replaced by a stone one that arched elegantly over the still waters that—if the estate records were accurate—had in those harsh days of yore been filled with the bodies of French troops thrown futilely against the massive English stronghold.

  All of a sudden the sight of the Castle brought Lady Sylvia to mind, and Nicholas had a vision of her standing regally on the threshold of his castle, dressed in green velvet, a golden chain around her slender waist, a veil covering her red hair.

  Nicholas gave his head a shake. He must be hallucinating, he thought.

  As a boy growing up in the midst of a rich tradition of historical events, Nicholas had spent many hours listening to his grandfather recount tales of heroism passed down—and doubtless embellished with the years—through generations of Morleys. Later he had himself pored through the ancient records, becoming so familiar with the accounts of the precarious daily life in the castle that it was but a step for his youthful imagination to fancy that he had been a part of those exciting times.

  “Remember when we used to pretend we were knights in King Harold’s service?” Jason cut in abruptly, as though he had read his host’s thoughts. “You would lead us over the moors at breakneck speed, brandishing lances cut from old Dudley’s ash trees. We could never keep up with you after your father gave you that roan pony for your twelfth birthday. Lionheart, I believe you called him. How we envied you that pony.”

  “Yes, old Lionheart,” Nicholas added with a nostalgic laugh. “My trusty war horse. How grand he looked when Stephen borrowed one of those old tapestries from the South Hall to drape over him.”

  “I shall never forget the thrashing you got from your father when he found out about that little adventure. Something about wanton disregard for family heirlooms or such, I believe.”

  Nicholas well remembered that thrashing, one of several he received for failing to show proper respect for his heritage. It had been worth it, though. The thrill of leading his little troop at full gallop through the village, colorful tapestry flapping on Lion- heart’s rump, had gone down in history as one of his most triumphant moments.

  “And remember the garter you carried on the end of your lance as a favor from a lady?” Jason added with a chuckle.

  “How could I not,” Nicholas responded. “One of the scullery wenches, was she not? Little Nelly Crofts. A jolly good sport, too. She married a tenant of Hazelworth’s and moved up to Penryn, I believe. I wonder if she remembers lending us her garter?”

  He had wanted to take one of his mother’s, but at the last moment the probable repercussions of such a sacrilegious act had caused him to settle for Nelly’s less flamboyant article instead.

  “That I could not say,” Jason remarked, “but I do recall the afternoon Matt threw Stephen into the moat, claiming he was a traitor to Harold’s cause. We had to jump in ourselves to pull him out, remember, after the poor lad was chased by the swans. Your brother could have been drowned.”

  “Yes, he could have,” Nicholas agreed, his amusement dissipating at the mention of his cousin’s name. One more vicious act to chalk up to Matt’s lengthy history of nastiness, he thought, although at the time it had seemed nothing more than a boyish prank. Now he was not so sure of anything anymore.

  Nicholas found Tom Gates waiting for him at the foot of the staircase, cap in hand, an anxious expression on his weathered face.

  “What is it, Gates? Nothing wrong, I trust?”

  “That depends, milord,” the agent replied in his terse way. “I thought you might like to know that your cousin is back, milord. Staying at the Pirate’s Cove Inn at Helston, I hear.”

  Nicholas stopped dead in his tracks, a muttered oath on his lips. He had not seen his Cousin Matt since the day after Angelica’s funeral, and had hoped never to set eyes on his wife’s paramour again. Now that Matt’s billet-doux had surfaced after all these years, reviving memories Nicholas had put behind him, the prospect of having to face Farnaby was less appealing than ever.

  “When did he arrive?”

  “Two days ago, milord, according to Bill Bates. Sent his youngest over with the news that Sir Farnaby was racked up at the Pirate’s Cove. Tried to charge his reckoning to your lordship’s account, he did, but Bates would have none of it without your permission, milord.”

  Nicholas heard Jason’s snort of disgust at the agent’s recital. Apparently, his cousin had not changed his ways, and what his Aunt Lydia had told him weeks ago must be true. Matt’s pockets were to let again.

  “He has not been here, I trust,” he said sharply.

  The agent looked apprehensive. “Aye, milord. Your cousin paid a morning visit yesterday, asking for Mrs. Hargate, but he was turned away. I trust we did the right thing, milord. Seeing as how you had given orders not to—”

  “You did the right thing, Gates,” the earl assured him. “At no time is Farnaby to enter my home. Under any pretext whatsoever. Understood?”

  After the agent had taken his leave, Nicholas turned to the captain and found that his friend’s eyes were sympathetic.

  “This could become damned awkward, Nick,” Jason warned him.

  “Not if that bastard keeps out of my way,” Nicholas growled.

  Jason grinned humorlessly. “Matt was never one to keep out of the spotlight, Nick, as you well know.”

  Nicholas was all too familiar with his cousin’s penchant for attention, but it was not Matt’s visits to his mother or his perennial lack of funds that disturbed him. The suspicion that his cousin had a more sinister purpose in mind for revisiting the scene of his iniquity made the earl doubly wary. “I wonder if this sudden reappearance
has anything to do with Lady Sylvia,” he remarked, giving voice to his fears.

  “We shall doubtless find out tonight at the Huntsvilles’ Ball, old man.”

  “You cannot believe he will have the effrontery to show his face there,” Nicholas exclaimed impatiently.

  Jason’s laugh held not a shred of humor. “If you doubt that, you are more of a nodcap than I thought, Nick, m’lad. So gird on your trusty sword and be prepared to defend the lady. It will be quite like old times. Matt always did dispute your right to be our leader, remember?”

  Nicholas remembered. And the prospect of rescuing a real damsel in distress appealed to his sense of chivalry in ways he was still unwilling to admit. Even to himself.

  Lady Sylvia gazed at her reflection in the beveled mirror on her dressing table and made a wry face. The silvery gray silk clinging to her slim figure revealed more than she liked of her bosom and outlined the curve of her hips rather daringly before falling in a shimmering line to the ruffled flounce at the hem.

  Her abigail clucked her tongue approvingly. “That gown is stunning on you, milady. You will put every other lady in the shade.” Molly stood beside her, holding the open jewelry box, waiting for her mistress to make a selection. “The pink diamonds would look wonderful, milady,” she suggested, “although the opals are also lovely.”

  On impulse Sylvia selected the diamonds. In all the years she had attended, the Huntsvilles’ Ball had never been one of those brilliant affairs she remembered from Weston Abbey, where diamonds were de rigueur and her mother’s guests vied to outshine one another. A birthday gift from her brother, John, the pink diamonds were her favorite ornament, but one she never wore unless her twin was present.