by Mary Balogh
“I am sorry too, Chastity,” Freyja said. “I honor you.”
“For what my word is worth,” Anne Jewell said, “I corroborate everything Lady Chastity has said.”
Sir Rees Newton rose to his feet. “I have heard enough,” he said. “I thank you for inviting me here, Lady Chastity, to hear these dreadful family secrets. I did not doubt Lord Hallmere's story, but your account of what happened has banished any shred of doubt that may have lingered. You are not responsible for your brother's death. As a magistrate I absolve you of all blame. As for the pain surrounding the whole tragedy and its revelation tonight to those who did not know before, well, that is none of my concern. I will leave you all and return to my good wife in the ballroom.”
He bowed and left the room without further ado.
“That girl, that Prudence,” the marchioness said, pushing Constance aside and sitting forward in her chair, “is to be taken from this house and locked up in an asylum where she belongs. This would never have happened if she had not been constantly flaunting herself before Albert—not that I believe he showed her anything more than a filial affection. He was always a loving boy. I never want to set eyes upon Prudence again. She is to be gone by morning. Cousin Calvin, you will see to it, if you please. You are a clergyman. You must know a suitable place where she can be taken.”
“If Prue goes, Mama,” Chastity said, “I go too.”
“Enough now,” Joshua said, stepping forward into the middle of the room and speaking with firm authority. “There has been mischief enough here in the past few weeks. I had hoped that the truth might never come out, but perhaps there is something in the old adage that the truth will out no matter what. Perhaps it needed to come out. But it must and will be remembered that Prue is the most innocent of innocent victims in all this. She will remain in this house—in my house—for as long as she wishes, Aunt, and she will always be welcome here even after she has left.”
“Prudence is my daughter,” his aunt cried.
“And my ward,” Joshua reminded her. “But we will not wrangle over her as if she were an inanimate object. Prue is a woman, and she has a mind and a will of her own. She is capable of choosing her own future, her own course in life, and in fact she has already chosen. She is going to wed Ben Turner.”
The marchioness stared mutely at him and then got to her feet to confront him, her face pale and distorted with anger.
“You would wed Lady Prudence Moore to an uncouth fisherman?” she asked him.
“I will be making the announcement as soon as we have returned to the ballroom, Aunt,” he said. “Come with me and smile and look glad. Tomorrow we may discuss all that needs discussing. Tonight we have guests to entertain, and we are neglecting them.”
But his aunt had looked beyond his shoulder and her eyes had narrowed to slits and her lips had thinned.
“You!” she said, stepping past Joshua to stand toe to toe with Freyja. “This is all your fault! If you had not used your high-and-mighty wiles to seduce Joshua in Bath and snatch him from under Constance's very nose, he would have been betrothed to her by now and we would have been the close, happy family we have always been. And now you have come to invade Penhallow itself and to lord it over all of us with your proud, contemptuous family.”
Freyja raised her eyebrows and regarded the marchioness with cold, silent disdain.
Joshua watched, appalled, as his aunt raised one hand and slapped her palm hard across Freyja's cheek. He reached out ineffectually with one hand, but he was too late.
Freyja had drawn back her right arm and punched his aunt in the nose. She went down like a bundle of old rags.
Calvin cleared his throat. The other ladies looked on as if waiting politely for the next scene of the drama. Joshua noticed that one of his aunt's hair plumes had snapped in two.
“I was beginning to be very much afraid,” Freyja said, “that she would never give me provocation enough to permit me to do that. I am very glad she did.”
By midnight the ball had ended and everyone had returned home, all assuring Joshua as they left that they had never enjoyed a grander evening. The drama with Hugh Garnett in the middle of the ball, Freyja guessed, had only enhanced their delight.
So had the announcement of the betrothal of Prue and Ben, and the bubbling happiness of both for the rest of the evening had brought even Freyja to the edge of tears a couple of times. She had blinked them away quite firmly each time. Lady Freyja Bedwyn was certainly not given to shedding sentimental tears.
Incredibly, the marchioness had returned to the ballroom with the rest of her family. Her nose had been rather red for a while—as had one of Freyja's cheeks—and her two remaining hair plumes had had to be rearranged, but she had pulled herself together and smiled her usual sweet martyr's smile.
Constance had danced the final three sets of the evening, Freyja had noticed with interest, with Joshua's steward, James Saunders, who had not danced at all until then. Constance, usually quiet and dignified and self-contained, suddenly made no secret of the glow of love in her eyes and her cheeks. She really had looked very pretty indeed. After the first five minutes or so, Mr. Saunders was returning look for look.
“It was a wonderful evening, Joshua,” Eve said when a few of them were alone in the empty ballroom. The marchioness and the Reverend Calvin Moore had withdrawn. Chastity and Miss Palmer had taken Prue off to bed. Constance had disappeared somewhere with Mr. Saunders. “We have attended similar such assemblies at the village inn at home, have we not, Aidan? But tonight has made me realize that we must invite everyone to our own home, perhaps for a summer garden party or a Christmas party or—”
Aidan laughed and set an arm about her waist. “Or both, my love,” he said. “Did you know you were to have so many supporters here tonight, Joshua?”
“Let me just say that I was not surprised,” Joshua said with a grin.
“It was priceless,” Alleyne added. “I just wish it had come to fisticuffs, though. I would have liked nothing better than to lay out that grinning Garnett fellow. But I suppose it would not have been quite the thing with so many ladies present, would it?”
“I at least got to plant the marchioness a facer,” Freyja said. “I was never so pleased in my life as I was when she slapped my face.”
“You see?” Morgan threw her hands in the air. “I miss all the fun. You do not tell me anything, Freyja. Whatever happened?”
“It is a long story,” Freyja said, “and not mine to tell.”
“You all came here to give me your support when it seemed I was to be charged with murder,” Joshua said. “I believe you have earned the right to know the truth. I know I can count upon your discretion.”
He gave them a brief, bare account of what had been revealed earlier in the library.
“Oh, Prue,” Eve said, closing her eyes when Joshua had finished and setting her arm about Aidan's waist. “My sweet, innocent Prue. But she had Chastity and Miss Jewell and Joshua as her champions, and now she is to have that steady, very nice young man, Ben Turner. She will be happy, I believe. I am ready for bed.”
Aidan kissed the top of her head.
Freyja gazed at them rather wistfully. She had never seen any public display of affection between them before now.
“I am not,” she said. “I need air and exercise and the wind in my face. Take me down onto the beach, Josh?”
Alleyne grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows, but no one voiced any comment or—more to the point—any protest. They all went off to bed while Freyja changed hastily into a woolen dress and a warm, hooded cloak, and sturdy shoes. It was a chilly night—she knew that much even though it was a light night too. They would have no need of any lantern to light their way down into the valley and along the river path. Joshua had changed out of his evening finery too, she noticed when she met him in the hall.
There was a depressing feeling of anticlimax needing to be blown away in the wind. The danger to Joshua was over—after what really had bee
n a wonderfully satisfying scene in the ballroom. All the uncertainties about that night of Albert's death had been put to rest. It was over. There was nothing left to be done.
Nothing to keep them at Penhallow.
Nothing to keep them together.
“Will you stay for Prue's wedding?” she asked.
“Yes,” he told her.
“A whole month while the banns are read?” she said. “You will endure all that time here, Josh, because you love her?”
“Yes,” he said.
He was not at all the sort of person she had thought him. The realization had annoyed her just a few days ago. Now she was glad he was not, and she was glad she had been given an opportunity to discover the sort of person he really was.
“And what then?” she asked. “Everything here will go on as it always has, and you will . . . what? Wander? Enjoy life again?”
“I have a feeling,” he said, “that Constance's marriage will not be long delayed. Her eyes were finally opened to a number of things tonight, I believe. Certainly she was making an almost public acknowledgment of her feelings for Jim Saunders before the evening was over, and he looked as if he was very willing to be persuaded to marry so far above him.”
“The match would have your approval, then?” she asked. She wondered what Wulf would have to say if she suddenly embarked upon a romance with one of his stewards.
“It would,” he said. “But my approval is supremely unimportant, is it not? Constance is of age and not my ward. And, like Prue, she has a mind of her own and is quite capable of deciding what will give her greatest happiness in life. I cannot think dynastically, Freyja. I was not raised that way.”
“You will stay for that wedding too, then?” They were approaching the end of the valley, and the steep hillside no longer protected them from the fresh west wind, which sent their cloaks billowing out to the side.
“Yes,” he said. “I would like to settle them in the dower house, but I will need to work out a few details first.”
“And so poor Chastity will be left at Penhallow alone with her mother,” Freyja said. “But at least she will have her sisters close.”
“My aunt can no longer live at Penhallow,” he said, turning his head and looking down at her. “Penhallow is going to be my home.”
“Oh.” She looked at him in some surprise. But she could think of nothing else to say. She was feeling a little hurt for some reason she could not yet quite fathom.
“She will have to live at the dower house herself if no other solution presents itself,” he said. “But I am going to do all in my power to find her somewhere else to live. And I daresay she will not want to be in such close proximity to me.”
“Chastity?” she said.
He sighed. “My ward,” he said. “But not my prisoner. I cannot decide what she will do, can I? Perhaps she will choose to go wherever my aunt goes. Perhaps she will go to live with Constance—or remain here. I shall give her the chance of a Season in London if she wants it, though I am not sure how I would go about it. I am the Marquess of Hallmere, though, am I not? A man of importance and influence.” He grinned at her.
They rounded the headland, and the wide flat sands of the beach stretched before them, the towering cliffs to one side, the sea to the other. It was half out or half in—Freyja did not know which. She could hear the rush of the water and see the moonlight sparkling across its surface. It was chillier here, the air damper and saltier. She lifted her face and drew in great lungfuls of it.
He was going to stay, then. He was going to take on his responsibilities as head of his family. He was going to settle down. Without her.
“Perhaps I will see you in London next spring, then,” she said. “Morgan will be making her come-out.”
“I want the first waltz at the first ball,” he said. “We have waltzed together only once, Free, and even that was interrupted by the necessity of chasing after the master of ceremonies to announce our betrothal.”
They set off across the beach, the wind in their faces.
“The first waltz is reserved, then,” she said.
They walked in silence for a while. They were not touching. She had her hands inside her cloak. He had his clasped behind him.
“The tide is on the way in,” he said. “But we have plenty of time before we get cut off from the valley.”
“Did he commit suicide, do you think?” she asked.
“Albert?” He was silent for a few moments. “He must have realized he was in deep trouble. He also knew that his mother could see no wrong in him and that his father was weak. He did not seem like the sort of man who would take his own life anyway. But who knows? Chass had given him an ultimatum. So had I. I had told him that if he was still within ten miles of Penhallow by nightfall of the next day I would kill him with my bare hands. I don't suppose I would have done it, but I would have pounded him within an inch of his life. He knew it too. My guess is that he was overcome by the cold or by cramps. He was a nasty, villainous creature, Freyja—I always suspected that he was in on that attempted smuggling ring too. But enough on that topic. It is over and done with.”
He stopped walking and stood looking out to sea. Freyja stood beside him, feeling all the vast wonder of the universe and the exhilaration of the fact that she was part of it.
“Freyja,” he said, “what are you doing for the rest of your life?”
Oh, no! She was alerted by his tone and by the fact that he had called her Freyja rather than Free or sweetheart.
“Whatever it is,” she said, lifting her chin, “it will be done without you, Josh. I am not one of your loose ends that must be tied up neatly before you can settle peacefully here. It was never a part of our bargain that you feel obligated to offer for me in earnest.”
“What if it is not obligation that I feel?” he asked.
But her throat suddenly felt raw and painful and she realized in some horror that if she allowed him to speak one more word she might make an utter idiot of herself by starting to bawl. How dared he! She did not need this. She turned sharply about and eyed the cliffs. The moonlight was full upon them. They did not look quite so sheer from below.
“I am going up,” she said.
He sighed. “Very well, then,” he said. “It is probably wise to start back anyway. The tide is coming in fast.”
“I am going up there.” She pointed to the top of the cliffs, and she felt the familiar weakness of the knees and shortness of breath that had assailed her throughout a life of forcing herself to do dangerous things, preferably those that most terrified her. She had climbed trees when she was a girl only because she had been afraid of heights.
Joshua chuckled. “I will come back in the morning, sweetheart,” he said, “and sweep up your remains. No, I won't be able to do that, will I? They will have been washed away by the tide. What the devil are you doing?”
She was striding straight toward the cliffs.
“I am going up the cliffs,” she said.
“Why?” He caught up to her. “We are not even close to being cut off by the tide.”
“Why?” she said haughtily. “What a stupid question, Josh. Because they are there, of course.”
She pushed her cloak behind her back, found her first foothold and handhold, and raised herself clear of the beach. She looked back over her shoulder.
“I'll race you to the top,” she said.
CHAPTER XXIII
What he ought to have done, Joshua thought, was to have plucked her off the cliff face and borne her back to the house by the valley route, by force if necessary. It would have been necessary, of course. He would have had to tuck her under one arm or toss her over one shoulder and parry her blows as best he could without retaliating in kind and close his ears to her curses. But at least she would still have been a live body by the time he had set her down safely inside Penhallow.
It would have been the responsible thing to do, and he had drawn responsibility about him like a mantle during the past week o
r so. He had become a new person, a mature adult, a sober marquess with duty as his guiding light. He had been preparing to fade into stodgy respectability and premature middle age.
But what was he doing instead of hauling Freyja safely back home?
He was climbing the cliffs with her, that was what.
In the middle of the night, with a stiff wind blowing.
And with her hampered by a woman's garments.
He was also doing a good deal of laughing. The utter absurdity of it all! And the undeniable rush of exhilaration at the danger of it all!
Not that it was quite as dangerous as it looked—especially from above. Steep as the cliffs were, they provided any number of perfectly steady holds for feet and hands. Of course, there was no going back down once they had started. For one thing, going down a cliff face was infinitely more difficult than going up. For another, the tide was already in at the river mouth, and there would be no way of reaching the valley except by swimming.
He was not engaging in a race. He was keeping as close to her as he could, and slightly below her, almost as if he believed he could catch her if she should happen to slip and hurtle past him. But perhaps he could offer some assistance if she got stuck. Not that he offered out loud. He did not want anger to distract her. When she stopped, sometimes for a whole minute at a time, he stayed quietly where he was.
He knew that as soon as they reached the top they were going to collapse, their legs turned to jelly and quite useless for many minutes. They were also going to lie flat on the blessedly flat land, clinging to it as if expecting to slide off into space at any moment. And they were going to vow, as he had vowed every time he had done this as a boy, that never again would they be so foolhardy.
The last few yards were the most difficult, where solid stone became intermingled with earth and grass and loose pebbles and the dangers of finding a false foothold and sliding uncontrollably became very real. He remembered clinging motionless for maybe half an hour a body length from the top the first time he made the climb, unable for all that time to persuade himself to move a muscle while telling himself that he must before he disgraced himself by losing control of his bladder.
