Running from Scandal

by Amanda McCabe

  Just like all those silly girls at school had done.

  ‘I would imagine not,’ Emma murmured. She had never heard Miss Marton or Miss Cole talk of anything but hats or the weather. ‘Does your uncle still live nearby, Sir David? I should so love to meet him one day.’

  ‘He does, Miss Bancroft, though I fear he has become quite reclusive in his advancing age. He still sometimes purchases volumes at Mr Lorne’s shop, though, so perhaps you will encounter him there one day. He would find you most interesting.’

  Before Emma could answer, the orchestra, a local group of musicians more noted for their enthusiasm than their talent, launched into the opening strains of a mazurka.

  ‘Oh, I do love such a lively dance,’ Jane said. Emma saw that her sister looked towards the forming set with a wistful look on her face. ‘A mazurka was the first dance I—’

  Suddenly Jane broke off with a strange little laugh and Emma wondered if she had often danced a mazurka with her husband in London. Surely even though she never mentioned her husband she had to think of him often.

  ‘Jane...’ Emma began.

  Sir David turned to Jane with one of his gentle smiles. ‘Perhaps you would care to dance, Lady Ramsay? My skills at the mazurka are quite rusty, but I would be honoured if you would be my partner.’

  For a second, Jane seemed to hesitate, a flash of what looked like temptation in her eyes, and Emma felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy. Jealousy—of Jane! Loathing herself for that feeling, she pushed it away and made herself smile.

  ‘Oh, no, I fear my dancing days are quite behind me,’ Jane said. ‘But books are not the only thing Emma studied at school. They also had a fine dancing master.’

  A horrid dancing master. Emma didn’t like him intruding on every moment of her life like this. Would she ever forget him?

  ‘Then perhaps Miss Bancroft would do me the honour,’ Sir David said politely. He turned to Emma and half-held out his hand.

  And she suddenly longed so much to know what it felt like to have his hand on hers. To be close to him as he led her in the turns and whirls of the dance. Surely he would be strong and steady, never letting her fall, so warm and safe. Maybe he would even smile at her again and those beautiful grey eyes would gleam with admiration as he looked at her. She wanted all those things so very much.

  She hadn’t felt such romantic yearnings since—since Mr Milne first arrived at her school. And look at what disasters that led to. No, she couldn’t trust her feelings, her impulsive emotions, ever again.

  Emma fell back a step, shaking her head, and Sir David’s hand dropped back to his side. His smile faded and he looked solemn and inscrutable again.

  ‘I—I don’t care to dance tonight,’ Emma stammered, confused by old memories and new emotions she didn’t understand. She had made a mistake with Mr Milne, a mistake in trusting him and her feelings. She needed to learn how to be cautious and calm, like Jane. Like Sir David.

  ‘Of course not, Miss Bancroft,’ Sir David said quietly. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘David, dear,’ Miss Louisa Marton said. Emma spun around to find that Miss Marton and Miss Cole had suddenly appeared beside them from the midst of the crowd. She’d been so distracted she hadn’t even noticed them approach. Miss Cole watched them with a coolly amused smile on her beautiful face, making Emma feel even more flustered.

  ‘David, dear,’ Louisa said again. ‘Do you not remember that Miss Cole promised you the mazurka? You were quite adamant that she save it for you and I know how much both of you have looked forward to it.’

  Sir David gave Emma one more quizzical glance before he turned away to offer his hand to Miss Cole instead. ‘Of course. Most delighted, Miss Cole.’

  Emma watched him walk away, Miss Cole laughing and sparkling up at him with an easy flirtatiousness Emma knew she herself could never match. She felt suddenly cold in the crowded, overheated room and rubbed at her bare arms.

  ‘I know you think Sir David is rather dull, Emma,’ Jane said quietly, ‘but truly he is quite nice. You should have danced with him.’

  ‘I am a terrible dancer,’ Emma said, trying to sound light and uncaring. ‘No doubt I would have trod on his toes and he would have felt the need to lecture me on decorum.’

  Jane shook her head, but Emma knew she couldn’t really put into words her true feelings, her fears of what might happen if she got too close to the handsome, intriguing Sir David Marton. She didn’t even know herself what those true feelings were. She only knew David Marton wasn’t the sort of man for her.

  * * *

  Emma Bancroft was a most unusual young lady.

  David tried to catch a glimpse of her over the heads of the other dancers gathered around him, but the bright glow of her golden hair had vanished. He almost laughed at himself for the sharp pang of disappointment at her disappearance. He was too old, too responsible, to think about a flighty, pretty girl like Miss Bancroft. A girl who obviously didn’t much like him.

  Yet the disappointment was there, unmistakably. When she was near, she always intrigued him. What was she thinking when she studied the world around her so closely? Her sister said she studied botany, among other interests, and David found himself most curious to know what those interests were. He wanted to know far too much about her and that couldn’t be.

  He had no place for someone like Emma Bancroft in his life now and she had no room for him. She seemed to be in search of far more excitement than he could ever give her. After watching his seemingly quiet father’s secret temper tantrums when he was a boy, he had vowed to keep control over his life at all times. It had almost been a disaster for David’s family and their home when he did briefly lose control. Once, he had spent too much time in London, running with a wild crowd, gambling and drinking too much, being attracted to the wrong sort of female, thinking he could forget his life in such pursuits. Until he saw how his actions hurt other people and he knew he had to change.

  As David listened to the opening bars of the dance music and waited for his turn to lead his partner down the line, he caught a glimpse of his sister watching him with an avid gleam in her eyes. Ever since their parents died and he became fully responsible for their family estate at Rose Hill and for Louisa herself, she had been determined to find him a wife. ‘A proper wife,’ she often declared, by which she meant one of her own friends. A young lady from a family they knew well, one Louisa liked spending time with and who would make few changes to their household.

  Not a girl like Miss Bancroft, who Louisa had expressed disapproval of more than once. ‘I cannot fathom her,’ Louisa had mused after encountering Miss Bancroft on the road. ‘She is always running about the countryside, her hems all muddy, with that horrid dog. No propriety at all. And her sister! Where is Lady Ramsay’s husband, I should like to know? How can the earl just let the two of them ramble about at Barton Park like that? The house is hardly fit to be lived in. Though we must be nice to them, I suppose. They are our neighbours.’

  David suddenly glimpsed Lady Ramsay as she moved around the edge of the dance floor, seeming to look for someone. Her sister, perhaps? Miss Bancroft was nowhere to be seen. David had to agree that the Bancroft sisters’ situation was an odd one and not one his own highly respectable parents would have understood. The two women lived alone in that ramshackle old house, seldom going out into neighbourhood society, and Lord Ramsay was never seen. Lady Ramsay often seemed sad and distant and Miss Bancroft very protective of her, which was most admirable.

  David thought they also seemed brave and obviously devoted to each other. Another thing about Miss Bancroft that was unusual—and intriguing.

  Suddenly he felt a nudging touch to his hand and glanced down in surprise to find he still stood on the crowded dance floor. And what was more, it was his turn in the figures as the music ran on around him.

  Miss Cole smiled up at him,
a quick, dazzling smile of flirtatious encouragement, and he led her down the line of dancers in the quick, leaping steps of the dance. She spun under his arm, light and quick, the jewels in her twists of red-gold hair flashing.

  ‘Very well done, Sir David,’ she whispered.

  Miss Cole, unlike Miss Bancroft, was exactly the sort of young lady his sister wanted to see him marry. The daughter of a local, eminently respectable squire, and friends with Louisa for a long time: pretty and accomplished, sparkling in local society, well dowered. The kind of wife who would surely run her house well and fit seamlessly into his carefully built life. And she seemed to like him.

  Miss Bancroft was assuredly not for him. She was too young, too eccentric, for them to ever suit. His whole life had been so carefully planned by his family and by himself. He almost threw it all away once. He couldn’t let that happen again now. Not for some strange fascination.

  Miss Cole, or a lady like her, would make him a fine wife. Why could he not stop searching the room for a glimpse of Emma Bancroft?

  * * *

  From the diary of Arabella Bancroft—1663

  I have at last arrived at Barton Park. It was not a long journey, but it feels as if I have ventured to a different world. Aunt Mary’s house in London, the endless hours of sewing while she bemoaned all that was lost to her in the wars between the king and Parliament, the filth in the streets—here where everything is green and fresh and new, all that is almost forgotten.

  I know I must be grateful to be brought here to my cousin’s beautiful new manor, this gift to him from the new king. I am a poor orphan of seventeen and must live as I can. Yet I cannot understand why I am here. My cousin’s wife has enough maids. I have nothing yet to do but settle into my new chamber—my very own, not shared! Heaven!—and explore the lovely gardens.

  But my chambermaid has told me the most intriguing tale—it seems that during the wars one of King Charles’s men hid a great treasure near here. And it has never been found.

  I do love a puzzle.

  Chapter One

  Six years later

  Barton Park. Emma could hardly believe she was there again, after so much time. It felt as if she had been swept up in a whirlwind from one world and dropped into another, it was all so strange.

  She stood at the rise of a hill, staring down along the grey ribbon of road to the gates of Barton. They stood slightly open, as if waiting to welcome her home, but Barton no longer felt like home. There was no longer anywhere that felt like home now. She was just a little piece of gossamer flotsam, blown back to these gates.

  She gathered her black skirts in one hand to keep them from tossing around her in the wind. The carriage waited for her patiently on the road below, halted on its uneventful journey from London to here when she insisted on getting out to look around. Her brother-in-law’s driver and footmen waited quietly, no doubt fully informed by downstairs gossip about the unpredictable ways of Lady Ramsay’s prodigal sister.

  Emma knew she should hurry inside. The wind was brisk and the pale-grey clouds overhead threatened rain. Her old dog, Murray, whined a bit and nudged with his cold nose at her gloved hand, but he wouldn’t leave her side. Murray, at least, had never changed.

  Yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to go to the house just yet.

  She’d left Barton five years ago as Miss Emma Bancroft, full of hopes and fears for her first London Season. She came back now as Mrs Carrington, young widow, penniless, shadowed by gossip and scandal. The fears still lingered, but the hope was quite, quite gone.

  She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the light and studied the red-brick chimneys of Barton rising through the swaying banks of trees. Spring was on the way, she could see it in the fresh, pale green buds on the branches, could smell the damp-flower scent of it on the wind. Once she had loved spring at Barton. A time of new beginnings, new dreams.

  Emma wanted to feel that way again, she wanted it so desperately. Once she had been so eager to run out and discover everything life had to offer. But that led only to disaster, over and over. It ended in a life with Henry Carrington.

  Emma closed her eyes against a sudden spasm of pain that rippled through her. Henry. So handsome, so charming, so dazzling to her entire senses. He was like a whirlwind, too, and he swept her along with him, giddy and full of raw, romantic joy.

  Until that giddiness turned to madness and led them on a downward spiral through Continental spa towns where there was plenty of gambling to be had. Henry was always so sure their fortunes would turn around soon, on the turn of the next card, at the bottom of the next bottle. It only led them to shabbier and shabbier lodgings on shadier streets with uncertain friends.

  It led Henry to death at the wrong end of a duelling pistol, wielded by the husband of a woman he claimed to have fallen in love with at Vichy. And it took Emma back here to Barton, when she found the scandal had blocked her escape anywhere else.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Henry’s cousin Philip had said, grasping her hand tightly in his when he gave her the news of the fatal duel. ‘Henry would have wanted it that way. And you know how very much I have always admired you. Dearest Emma.’

  Philip had indeed always been Henry’s friend, a friend who caroused with him, but also loaned him money, made sure he made it home, visited Emma when she was alone and frightened in strange rooms with no knowledge of when Henry might return. She appreciated Philip’s kindness, even in moments when his attentions seemed to ease over a line of propriety.

  In that moment, with Henry so newly dead and the shock so cold around her, she was almost tempted to let Philip ‘take care of her’. To give in to the loneliness and fear. But then she looked into his eyes and saw something there that frightened her even more. A gleam of possessive passion she saw once in Mr Milne, the dancing master, and in that villain who had once kidnapped her in the rainstorm at Barton.

  The same look they had just before they violently attacked her.

  So she sent Philip away, swallowed her pride, and wrote to her sister. Jane had warned her against Henry when Emma wanted to marry him, had even threatened to make Emma wait a year before she would even agree to an engagement, which led to Emma eloping and causing the first of many great scandals. And then Henry had found out that Jane and her husband had tied Emma’s dowry and small inheritance from her mother up so tightly he could never touch them and some of his passion died.

  While Emma wandered the Continent in Henry’s wake, Jane wrote sometimes, and they even saw each other once when the Ramsays were touring Italy. They were not completely estranged, but Jane would never give in when it came to the money. ‘It is yours, Emma, when you need it,’ she insisted and so Henry cut Emma off from the Ramsays.

  But when Emma wrote after Henry’s death, Jane immediately sent money and servants to fetch her home, since Jane herself was too pregnant to travel. Jane would never abandon her, Emma knew that. Only her own embarrassment and shame had kept her away from Barton until now, had kept her from leaving Henry and seeking the shelter of her childhood home. She wondered what she would find beyond those gates.

  Murray whined louder and leaned against her. Emma laughed and patted his head with her black-gloved hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, old friend,’ she said. ‘I know it’s cold out here. We’ll go inside now.’

  He trotted behind her down the hill and climbed back into the carriage at her side. For some months, Murray had seemed to be getting older, with rheumatic joints and a greying muzzle, but he wagged his plumy tail eagerly as they bounced past the gates. He seemed to realise they were almost home.

  The drive to Barton was a long, picturesquely winding one, meandering gently between groves of trees, old statues and teasing glimpses of chimneys and walls. In the distance, Emma could see the old maze, the white, peaked rooftops of the rebuilt summerhouse at its centre p
eeking up above the hedges. In the other direction were the fields and meadows of Rose Hill, the Marton estate, and its picturesque ruins of the old medieval castle, which she had long wanted to explore.

  Then the carriage came to a V in the drive. One way led to a cluster of old cottages, once used for retired estate retainers, and old orchards. The other way led to the house itself.

  Emma leaned out of the window next to Murray and watched as Barton itself came into view. Built soon after the return of Charles II for one of his Royalist supporters, Emma’s ancestor, its red-brick walls, trimmed with white stonework and softened by skeins of climbing ivy, were warm and welcoming.

  When Emma and Jane had lived there before Jane reconciled with Hayden, the walls had been slowly crumbling and the gardens overgrown. Now everything was fresh and pretty, the flowerbeds just turning green, the low hedge borders neatly trimmed, new statues brought from Italy gleaming white. Emma glimpsed gardeners on the pathways at the side of the house, busy with their trowels and shears.

  So much had changed. So much was the same.

  As the carriage rolled to a halt, the front door to the house flew open just as a footman hurried to help Emma alight. Jane came hurrying out, as quickly as she could with her pregnant belly impeding her usual graceful speed. Her hazel eyes sparkled and she was laughing as she clapped her hands.

  ‘Emma, my darling! Here you are at last,’ Jane cried. As soon as Emma’s half-boots touched the gravelled drive, Jane swept her into her arms and kissed her cheek. ‘Welcome home.’

  Home. As Emma hugged her sister back, felt her warmth and breathed in the soft, flowery scent of her lilac perfume, she could almost feel at home again. In sanctuary. Safe.