The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  She should have done. She should have been very much more on her guard. Matthew knew her employer’s brother! But she had never met the man herself. And he would not recognize her or know her name now that she had changed it. She must not start jumping at shadows.

  Willoughby Hall. Mr. Houghton had given that name as the home of her employer. But the mind is a strange thing. She had conceived such a strong and early mental impression of the Kent family that she had instantly visualized a modest manor. But she knew of Willoughby. It was one of the largest estates in England and was reputed to have one of the most magnificent mansions and parks in the country, besides.

  And then, long before her mind had adjusted itself to the new facts of her existence, the carriage was traveling past a high park wall dotted with mosses and lichens and overhung with ivy, and turning to pass between massive stone gateposts onto a winding avenue lined with lime trees.

  She could see rolling lawns dotted with oak and chestnut trees to either side. She even had a momentary glimpse of a group of grazing deer. Then the carriage rumbled over a bridge and she spotted rushing cascades passing below it. But even as she turned her head to get a better look, her attention was distracted.

  The lime trees did not stretch beyond the bridge. Open and rolling lawns did nothing to obstruct the view of a mansion whose magnificence made the breath catch in Fleur’s throat.

  The house had a long front, its low wings extending to either side of a high pedimented central section, its columns of exquisite fluted Corinthian design. A great central lantern and dome rose behind the pediment. The parapets were lined with stone statues, busts, vases, and urns.

  A great marble fountain before the house played among clipped hedges and terraces of flowers and greenery.

  She had thought Heron House, her own home—Matthew’s home—quite splendid. It would seem little more than a rustic cottage if set against this.

  So much for her cozy manor and small, close-knit family group, Fleur thought, resting her head briefly against the cushions behind her as the carriage drew up before the marble horseshoe steps leading up to the main doors and the piano nobile, the main floor.

  But it was the double doors below the steps that opened to admit her, the doors leading to the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Laycock, the housekeeper, would be pleased to receive Miss Hamilton in her private sitting room, a servant informed her with a half-bow before turning to lead the way.

  Mrs. Laycock looked rather like a duchess herself, Fleur thought, her slim figure clad simply yet elegantly in black, her silver hair dressed smartly on top of her head. Only the bunch of keys at her waist proclaimed her status as a servant.

  “Miss Hamilton?” she said, extending a hand to Fleur. “Welcome to Willoughby Hall. It must have been a long and tedious journey all the way from London. Mr. Houghton informed us that you would be arriving today. I am pleased that his grace has seen fit to employ a governess for Lady Pamela. It is time she had more stimulation for the mind and more activity than an elderly nurse can provide.”

  Fleur set her hand in the housekeeper’s and received a firm handshake. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “I shall do my best to teach the child well.”

  “It will not be easy,” Mrs. Laycock said, motioning Fleur to a chair. “May I pour you some tea, Miss Hamilton? I can see you are weary. You will have the duchess to contend with.”

  Fleur looked her inquiry.

  “Armitage, her grace’s personal maid, has confided to me that the duchess is not pleased with his grace’s sending a governess without even consulting her,” the housekeeper said, pouring a cup of tea and handing it to Fleur.

  “Oh, dear,” Fleur said.

  “But you are not to worry,” Mrs. Laycock said. “It is the duke who is master here, and his grace has seen fit to look to the future of his daughter. Now, Miss Hamilton, tell me something about yourself. You and I will get along well together, I believe.”

  PETER HOUGHTON, SORTING THROUGH THE DUKE of Ridgeway’s post and setting aside invitations that he thought his master might wish to accept, knew that the duke was in a bad mood as soon as he entered the house and even before he came into the study. There was a certain tone to his voice, even when one could not hear the exact words, that betrayed his mood.

  And his grace was limping slightly, the secretary saw, getting to his feet as the duke entered the room and sinking back into his chair again when the latter waved an impatient hand. Normally his grace went to great pains not to limp.

  “Anything of importance?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the pile of mail.

  “An invitation to dine with his majesty,” Houghton said.

  “Prinny? Make my excuses,” the duke said.

  “It is a royal summons to dinner and cards,” the secretary said with a cough.

  “Yes, I understand,” the duke said. “Make my excuses. Is there anything from my wife?”

  “Nothing, your grace,” Houghton said, looking down at the pile.

  “We will be leaving for Willoughby,” his grace said curtly. “Let me see. I have promised to accompany the Denningtons to the opera tomorrow evening in order to escort their niece. There is nothing else that cannot be canceled, is there? We will leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yes, your grace.” Peter Houghton smiled to himself as his employer strode from the room. It was two weeks to the day since the ladybird had been sent on her way by the stage. The duke had shown great fortitude in waiting that long before finding an excuse to go in pursuit.

  The Duke of Ridgeway took the stairs two at a time, as he usually did, despite the fact that his leg and side were aching. He rubbed absently at his left eye and cheek. It was the damp weather. The old wounds always acted up when the weather turned for the worse.

  Confound Sybil! She had consistently refused to accompany him to London since the time four years before when he had been forced to confront her and put an end to the wildest of her indiscretions. And yet it seemed that almost every time he had settled in London alone for a few months of peace, she had decided to organize a large country party, inviting every disreputable member of the ton, male and female, who could be persuaded to leave London for Dorsetshire.

  Very rarely did she think it necessary to inform him of her plans. He was left to find out—if he found out at all—by accident. On one occasion two years before he had not known until he returned home to find that all the guests had been and left again except for one straggler. And that straggler had been kind enough to do the chambermaids a favor by vacating his own guest bedchamber in order to share that of the duchess.

  The duke had sent that particular gentleman on his way within an hour of his return, and the man seemed to have taken to heart the advice not to show his face either at Willoughby or in London for at least the next ten years.

  And he had given his duchess a tongue-lashing about propriety before the servants and those dependent upon them that had finally turned her pale and reduced her to tears. Sybil always looked more beautiful than usual when in tears. And she had accused him of hard-heartedness, neglect, tyranny—all the old charges.

  This time his grace had learned of Sybil’s party from Sir Hector Chesterton at White’s. The man had seemed pleased by his invitation as he creaked inside his stays and wheezed for breath.

  “There’s nothing much to do in town these days, old chap,” he had said, “except ogle the young things. And their mamas cling to them like leeches so that all one can do is ogle. Decent of Sybil to invite me.”

  “Yes.” The duke had smiled arctically. “She likes to surround herself with company.”

  And so he must return to Willoughby himself, many weeks before he had planned to do so. He pulled the bell rope in his dressing room and shrugged out of his coat while he waited for his valet to arrive. For the sake of his servants and for Pamela’s sake, he must return. It would not be fair to allow them all to be witnesses to the debaucheries of Sybil and her friends.

  God! He pulled
at his neckcloth and tossed it aside. He had loved her. Once upon a time, an eternity ago, he had loved her. Sweet, fragile, blond and beautiful Sybil. He had dreamed of her, ached for her all the time he was in Belgium waiting for the battle that had become the Battle of Waterloo. He had lived on the memory of her bright smiles, her sweet protestations of love, her shy acceptance of his marriage proposal, her warm maiden’s kisses.

  God! He pulled at the top button of his shirt and watched it sail across the room and tinkle against the china bowl on the washstand.

  “Get someone to sew these infernal buttons on firmly,” he barked at his valet, who had the misfortune to come through the door at that moment.

  But his valet had been with him from boyhood, and accompanied him to war and been his personal servant in Spain and in Belgium. He was made of stern stuff.

  “The leg and side are aching, are they, sir?” he said cheerfully. “I thought they would in this weather. Lie down and let me massage them.”

  “How will that keep the buttons on my shirts, confound you?” the duke said.

  “It will, sir, take my word on it,” the valet said. “Lie down, now.”

  “I want my riding clothes,” the duke said. “I am going for a gallop in the park.”

  “After I massage you,” his man said like a nurse talking to a child. “Going back to Willoughby, are we, sir?”

  “Houghton has been spreading the glad tidings, has he?” his grace said, stretching out obediently on a couch in the dressing room and allowing his valet to remove his clothing and set to work with his strong and expert hands, which never failed to ease the aching. “Will you be glad to be home, Sidney?”

  “That I will,” his man said firmly. “And you too, sir, if you will but admit it. Willoughby was always your favorite place in the whole world.”

  Yes. It had been. He had grown up with a conscious awareness that it would all be his one day. And his love for Willoughby was deeply ingrained in him. It had stayed with him during his years at school and university and during his years in the army. He had insisted on buying his commission in an infantry regiment despite the fact that he was the elder son and heir and despite the opposition of his father and just about everyone who knew him.

  But Willoughby had remained in his blood. It was what he had fought for—Willoughby, his home, England in miniature.

  And yet now he hated to go back there. Because Sybil was there. Because life could never be what he had grown up dreaming that it would be.

  And yet he must go. And something deep in him was perversely glad that he must. Willoughby in the late spring and summertime—he closed his eyes and felt that deep surge of longing that he always felt for his home when he was away from it and allowed himself to think of it.

  And there was Pamela. Sybil did not care a great deal for her despite her protective attitude, despite the fact that she hated to allow him near the child. She spent almost no time with their daughter. Pamela needed him. She needed more than a nurse.

  She had more than a nurse. She had a governess.

  Fleur.

  He had put her from his mind after salving his conscience by finding her employment. And Houghton had assured him that she seemed qualified to be a governess. Houghton would have interviewed the girl thoroughly.

  He did not want to think of her. He did not want to see her again. He did not want to be reminded. He had only ever been unfaithful to Sybil that once, though there was precious little to be unfaithful to.

  Why had he had Fleur sent to Willoughby? He had other properties. He could have sent her to one of them in some servant’s capacity.

  Why Willoughby? To be in the same house as his wife. As himself. To teach his daughter.

  A whore teaching Pamela.

  “That’s enough, confound it,” he said, opening his eyes. “Are you trying to put me to sleep?”

  “That I was, sir,” Sidney said, smiling cheerfully. “There is less of your temper to contend with when you are asleep, sir.”

  “Damn your impudence,” the duke said, sitting up and rubbing at his eye again. “Fetch my riding clothes.”

  FLEUR DID NOT MEET either her new charge or the duchess during the day of her arrival at Willoughby Hall. They had apparently gone visiting during the afternoon, taking the child’s nurse with them.

  “Mrs. Clement was her grace’s own childhood nurse,” Mrs. Laycock explained. “They are very close. I am afraid she will resent you as much as the duchess will, Miss Hamilton. You must just keep in mind that it is his grace who pays your salary.” She spoke briskly, so that Fleur got the impression that she was not the only servant who must keep such a fact in mind.

  His grace was, apparently, from home. It was likely that he was in London for the Season if the Mr. Houghton who had interviewed her was his personal secretary. Mrs. Laycock did not know when he was to be expected home.

  “Though he will be here, no doubt, if he gets wind of the fact that her grace is planning another party,” that lady said, “and a grand ball.” Her tone was disapproving, though she said no more on the topic. She would take advantage of the absence of her grace, she said, to show Fleur something of the house abovestairs.

  It was so magnificent and built on such a massive scale that Fleur could only trail along behind Mrs. Laycock, gazing in awe and saying almost nothing. All of the state and family and business apartments were on the piano nobile, the schoolroom and the nursery and the servants’ quarters in the smaller rooms above. Fleur had already seen her own room, small and square and light and airy, next to the schoolroom. It overlooked back lawns and trees. It looked rather like heaven in comparison with her room in London.

  The tour of the house began in the great domed hall at the front of the house with its clerestory lantern high, just below the dome, flooding the room with light, and the dome itself painted with soaring angels. A gallery ran the circle below the lantern.

  “An orchestra sits up there on grand occasions,” the housekeeper explained. “When there is a ball, the doors to the long gallery and saloon are kept open to make one grand ballroom and promenade. You will see it if it rains the day of her grace’s ball. It is to be outdoors by the lake, and we will be invited, Miss Hamilton, it being an outdoor affair. But it will be moved indoors if the weather is inclement, of course.”

  Fleur looked up and tried to imagine an orchestra sitting up there and music echoing around the circular pillared hall. She imagined crowds of people dressed in their evening finery, bright and laughing and dancing. And she smiled. Oh, she was going to be very happy. Despite what Mrs. Laycock had hinted about the duchess and Lady Pamela’s nurse, she was going to be happy. How could she not be? She had had a glimpse of hell and had survived it.

  The long gallery ran the whole length of one of the wings, along the front of the house, one side of it consisting entirely of long windows and ancient Roman busts set in niches. The coved plasterwork frieze and ceiling gave an impression of great height and splendor. The long wall opposite the windows was hung with portraits in gilded frames.

  “His grace’s family from generations back,” Mrs. Laycock said. “You would need the master himself to explain it all to you, Miss Hamilton. There is nothing about Willoughby that he does not know.”

  Fleur identified a Holbein, a Van Dyck, a Reynolds. It must be wonderful, she thought, to have such a line of ancestors to picture in one’s mind. The Duke of Ridgeway, Mrs. Laycock told her, was the eighth duke of his line.

  “We are all waiting for an heir,” she said, her voice turning a little stiff. “But so far there has been only Lady Pamela.”

  The offices and most of the guest rooms were behind the long gallery, Fleur was told, though she was not taken there.

  The great saloon was on the central axis behind the hall, two stories high, its wall hangings of crimson Utrecht velvet, the heavy furniture arranged neatly around the perimeter of the room upholstered in the same material. The great pedimented doorcases and the cornice and mantel were gi
lded, the ceiling painted with a scene from some mythological battle that Mrs. Laycock could not identify. Large landscape paintings in heavy frames hung on the walls.

  The dining room, the drawing room, the library, other rooms, and the private family apartments were in the other wing, the one that balanced the gallery wing.

  Fleur was awed by it all. She had grown up in a grand house. Indeed her father had been its owner until his death in an inn fire with her mother when Fleur was eight years old. Both the house and his title had passed to his cousin, Matthew’s father, and she had become a mere ward of the master, kindly though carelessly treated by him, unwanted and resented by his wife and daughter, ignored by Matthew until recent years.

  But Heron House was not one of the great showpieces of England. Willoughby Hall evidently was. And despite her regret over the lost dream of a cozy manor and a small family group, she felt excited. She was to live in this magnificent mansion. She was to be a part of its busy life, responsible for the education of the duke and duchess’s young daughter.

  Good fortune was to be with her, after all, it seemed. Perhaps she was to have a small glimpse of heaven to balance her other recent experiences.

  “I would take you walking in the park,” the housekeeper said, “but I can see that you are weary, Miss Hamilton. You must go upstairs and rest for a while. Perhaps her grace will wish to speak with you later and perhaps you will be expected to become acquainted with Lady Pamela.”

  Fleur retired gratefully to her room. She was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by it all—by the events of the past two months, by the great good fortune of finding such a post when she had not been to that employment agency for a week, by the unexpected discovery that the post was no ordinary one at all. The journey had been long and exhausting.

  And she had just that morning had one of her great fears put to rest—she was not with child.

  Altogether, she thought, sitting by the window of her room, enjoying the peaceful scene outside and the gentle breeze that lifted the curtains and fanned her cheeks, she was far more well blessed than she could have expected to be just two months before.