Since he’d opened the box of his memories, Harrison found himself beset by them.
He handed the boy a ha’pence and walked to the tavern door.
To avoid being alone, he could reconcile with his wife, but he needed to know his limits. Would he have to live in the country? Would he have to bring her to London? And, for both questions, he needed to know how often and how long. The clench in his stomach tightened. But was it caused by imagining the possible restraints on his life or seeing Olivia again? He was uncertain. Damned uncertain.
Olivia. At the thought of her, a suffocating tangle of emotions ground into the center of his chest.
He’d wanted a wife who was brave, daring, funny, sweet, and clever enough to beat him at chess. But his father chose otherwise, giving him a dutiful wife, competent, smart in her own way, capable of being satisfied with a quiet life in the country. Had she been mousy, bland, or dim-witted, he could have justified his behavior.
But instead he had acted like a cad. After the wars, he should have returned to the estate. It was not Olivia’s fault that she became a pawn in the larger struggle between his sense of self and his father’s expectations. But with his father dead, he had delayed the visit, postponing for one day, then another, until somehow a year had passed. Unable to justify the delay, he decided not to go at all.
He had buried his unresolved feelings about his wife in a deep well already filled with other emotions: anger at his father’s manipulations, unresolved grief for his family—all dead—guilt for his own negligence, and his desire for the woman his father had chosen. Then, with practice, he sequestered the mess of emotion behind a strong wall of practicality.
“Sir?” The innkeeper’s voice cut through his memories. “Would you like a bit of food or drink?” The slight man with mismatched eyes gestured toward the room reserved for men of rank or money.
“Claret. No: Whiskey. A deep glass.”
At a table against the back wall, he sat facing out, watching the travelers, the innkeeper, and the barmaids, noting their heights, sizes, clothing, quirks of expression.
“Abbey-bound?” The oldest barmaid, thick pale hair twisted under a cap, filled his glass from the bottle.
“What makes you say that?” He hid his surprise behind the whiskey.
She nodded at the hackney passengers. “The coach passengers stop here on their way to somewhere else. Locals stop at the village, not here. You are neither on the coach nor local. That leaves the abbey.”
“Many people go to the abbey then?”
“Fair amount. Most that go there, stay there.” She watched the room, just as he did, noticing which tables might need attention. “Should be near a dozen there now.”
“A house party?” He downed the whiskey to keep her at his table.
“Not parties exactly. Just them Oxbridge men.”
“Oxbridge?”
“For the library—or so they say. I say it’s for the food, drink, and easy lodgings. But perhaps her ladyship finds consolation in the good-looking ones.”
The maid canted her head, hearing the arrival of another company.
“Consolation?”
“If you are going there, be wary.” She’d moved far enough away that he barely caught her sentence. “It can be a dangerous place.”
He downed the second whiskey in frustration. What Oxbridge men? How dangerous? What sort of consolation?
He could call the maid back and pay for the information, but it was not worth calling attention to his presence.
He put some coin on the table, and picking up his hat, strode from the room.
He’d see for himself.
In the yard, Walker broke away from a conversation with the severe-looking woman from the previous coach. The valet’s step bounced with gossip, but he waited patiently as Harrison gave the coachman directions.
“Interested in hearing what the stable-yard thinks of the management of your estate?” Walker settled himself back into his seat.
“Let me predict. Unsavory characters are sating their bellies at the table of the estate’s generosity.” He held back the tidbit that the men were handsome.
“And no one sees her ladyship for days on end. She supposedly sequesters in her rooms, but no one is certain.” Walker looked out the window. “Wait! Isn’t this the way we came?”
“I have decided to call on an old friend for his advice.” Harrison’s tone was clipped, and Walker fell silent.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the carriage stopped at the bottom of a low hill dotted with sheep. Sitting outside a large stone cottage, a tall, gaunt man with silver hair regarded the carriage with suspicion. Mr. Herder, his father’s old estate manager, looked as forbidding as ever.
Harrison approached the cottage in long, powerful strides.
“Is the abbey this way?” Harrison tested if the old man would remember him without prompting.
“The path by the river is narrow but serviceable.” The old man pointed into the distance. His gaze rested for a moment on Harrison’s oldest carriage and on Walker standing beside it, then he examined Harrison slowly. Tears welled in his eyes. “Oh, my boy, you look the image of your mother.”
The older man reached for his shepherd’s crook, then struggled to his feet. Harrison stepped forward instinctively, supporting Herder’s elbow. Herder turned the support into a hearty embrace, but when the gray-bearded man released Harrison, his face was grim with suspicion. “Why would you pretend not to know the road home? And why do you travel in a carriage without your family crest?”
Harrison helped the old man back to his seat. “I had hoped, after my long absence, to investigate the estate from the position of a stranger. I was hoping you would give me an introduction—as your relative—for a position belowstairs. I would have little risk of encountering her ladyship that way.”
Herder grimaced. “I understand your plan, but I don’t like it. An earl in service at his own estate can only cause ruptures later when you are no longer a servant. Pretend instead to be one of them scholars. Pert, quarrelsome men with more intelligence than sense, they are.”
A woman in her midfifties called out of the door of the cottage. “Da, I’m going to check on the lambs.”
Harrison stepped out of sight. But Herder waved away his concern. “No need to worry about my Molly recognizing you. She and my Harriet were in service in Tunbridge Wells when you were a boy. The girls only came home when Molly’s husband became estate manager, and now my Harriet is Miss Olivia’s parlor maid.”
Harrison winced at the reference to his wife, the countess, by her first name, as if she were an unmarried younger daughter. “Are you happy here?”
The old man held his hand out toward the chalk hills. “I was born in this valley. My wife bore our children in this cottage. I know these trees, these streams, like my own hand. If I can’t find happiness here, then I haven’t the resources to be happy anywhere. But this is your land, and now that you are home, you can set some things to right.”
“Is the estate not managed well?”
The old man looked torn. “Miss Olivia does the best she can. She’s a proud woman, and she might not tell you, but she faces obstacles that you will not.”
Harrison looked into the distance for some time, watching the sun begin its evening transit. A proud woman—a secretive woman—a house filled with suitors. He tamped down his rising jealousy. It wasn’t rational to be jealous of a woman he hadn’t wanted. But whatever the state of their marriage, the world knew her as his countess, and her behavior reflected on him, for good or ill.
“I’ll need your help, Herder, and your son-in-law’s. I’ll play a scholar, but first I need a key to the abbey. I’d like to look around the estate, without anyone knowing.”
* * *
“How long are we to stay here?” In Herder’s cottage, Walker looked around the small room with the single cot bed with an assessing eye. Clean, neat, serviceable, it could accommodate two trunks of clothing an
d the other goods they had brought with them, but nothing more. He removed his upper clothes, cravat first, then his waistcoat.
“You chose to remain instead of going home with the coach.” Harrison pulled his cravat loose, leaving the ends hanging as he unbuttoned his outer clothes.
“No, no, I would hate to miss the intrigue. Husband stealing home in disguise to test his wife’s fidelity. Whatever you need, I will be here.”
“A lovely declaration, Walker, but I saw you eyeing that pie in the window.” Harrison picked up Walker’s waistcoat and tried it on. Walker’s love of sweets made the waist a bit loose on Harrison, but that would add to the illusion.
“The fact that Herder’s daughter is a better cook than any you’ve hired in London is irrelevant.” Walker rummaged through the trunks. “It’s good that I ignored how long you said we would be staying. I’ve brought enough clothes for the both of us. Ah, here.” The valet pulled out a pair of trousers and one of Harrison’s oldest waistcoats and jackets. “I also brought some of your older clothes for mucking about the estate. Those should nicely convey the sense of a scholar in secondhand clothes.”
“I look like a poor exhibitioner stealing into the college common room.” Harrison stepped to the window. The sun had not yet set. He would have more than enough time to arrive before dark. “Where is my traveling desk? I need a letter of introduction.”
“In the corner here.” Walker lifted the desk and handed it to Harrison. “Who will you be?”
Harrison chose a piece of paper boasting his ducal seal as the watermark. “This intrigue puts me in mind of the Odyssey. I’ll be T. L. MacHus, a scholar who has gained his lordship’s patronage.”
“T. L. MacHus.” Walker repeated the name slowly, then a grin spread across his face. “Ah, Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, who searches for his father! Too bad you can’t simply be Odysseus: You’ve come home to find your wife surrounded by suitors.”
“They are scholars, Walker, not suitors.” But Harrison tasted the words like alum.
* * *
Having borrowed Herder’s nag, Harrison traveled the main road that led to the family manor, an old abbey deeded to an ancestor by Henry VIII.
His mind turned to other times he had ridden this road. Winter carriage rides for religious services in the village, his country-bred family, all energy and little formality, six children vying for the forward-facing seat. His mother, wearing a wan smile, would sit in the middle, one child on each side, his youngest brother in her arms. In his memories, she was never older than twenty-nine. His brothers, dressed for war, each riding a sure-footed, even-tempered horse who wouldn’t start at the sound of rifles, the smoke of the guns, or the cries of the wounded.
All dead.
He turned his mind away from memories too tender to bear for long.
Home. He could imagine every twist and turn of the road.
At the next bend, he would turn downward, where a slow river split the valley into pasture and woodland. The road would bend away from the river, leading him up a long hill into a dense ancient forest.
At the crest of the hill, he would look into a soft valley where seven hundred years before, monks built their abbey in native stone. Harrison’s ancestors had acquired the abbey through good service to Henry VIII. His great-grandfather had saved the great sanctuary, building alongside it a new manor house holding the public rooms, the dining hall, ballroom, drawing rooms, library, and the family and guest rooms.
But from the hill, he would see only the very tips of the abbey towers peeking between tall oaks and alders. A fairy city, built by magic, he’d always thought it. In that moment, with the abbey barely visible, he would know he was home.
From that high point, he would descend through deep forest, then emerge in a broad clearing, his home still nestled in trees. The outer buildings in ruins served as each generation of Walgrave children’s playground.
The road made him yearn for home. The scent of the trees, the sound of the river, the play of light on the road, the sweet memories of his family, all pulled him on, through the forest, up the hill. Before he reached the summit where he could see glimpses of his fairy castle, Harrison closed his eyes. He wanted to take in his first view of home all at once. It was uncharacteristically sentimental, but he indulged himself.
But when he opened his eyes, he felt as if he’d been struck in the gut. The trees were gone. His trees. His playground with his brothers. He felt flayed, chest split open, heart wrenched from his body. Nothing could have prepared him for the sense of loss and betrayal. All cut down, and for what?
For someone else, the view of a wide green plain, punctuated occasionally by ancient trees, might have been beautiful, even picturesque. But not to him.
He flung himself from his horse. He stood, looking at the rows of coppiced orchard, the large garden extending from the stone abbey, and the river in full view along the distant edge of the scene. Was he still in his bed at Herder’s cottage? And was this scene of desolation only a nightmare?
Overcome with sorrow, he placed one arm on the side of his horse and buried his face in the bend of his elbow. Tears welled from deep inside him, in big wrenching sobs. He wept for all his losses: brothers, sister, mother, father, all gone. He wept even for himself, left all alone.
Eventually the wrenching of his shoulders slowed. He was left breathing heavily in short bursts, until his tears were spent.
He did not know why she’d cut down the ancient forest. Perhaps she had not known how much the trees had meant to him. Rationally, he knew there was no way she could have known. But he didn’t care. After the tears, he felt only an implacable anger. She had destroyed his home, his lands, and having destroyed everything he loved, she wanted to escape.
His anger was cold, cunning, perhaps even cruel. He tied his horse to a tree in the shadow of the woods and circled toward the ruins behind the abbey. He knew a dozen places to steal into the abbey, and he had hours until dark to decide exactly what to do.
Chapter Eleven
Olivia cursed as she tried to pick the lock. Her skills were rusty from lack of use.
Six perfectly respectable years as a perfectly respectable wife. Yet, she was crouched in the dark, using a hat pin to steal quietly into her own home. Mrs. Pier never forgot to leave the conservatory unlocked. But it wouldn’t do to call for the butler to open the main door. No, that would make clear to the household that she had been gone, and only Mrs. Pier knew her secret. Seeing Harrison on the street in London had made her suspicious and wary. Though she trusted the servants to protect her, she needed no more rumors about her behavior.
The lock wasn’t giving. She bent down in the soft earth and tried again. At least she traveled in breeches. The lock finally surrendered, but with a snap and groan that made her wince. She could only hope that none of the scholars were wandering the grounds. She entered, taking off her slippers to make her way in stocking feet. She had slipped in more than once since becoming An Honest Gentleman. Even so, she had to remember every squeaking floorboard, every step on the staircase that might send out an alarm. By the time she reached her bedroom, she was past exhaustion. She stripped off her clothes and fell into bed.
She dreamed that night that her husband had come home. She entered their bridal suite to find him standing in partial undress at the window, looking out into the garden. She recognized the curve of blond hair at his neck, the way his shoulders narrowed into slender hips, the muscled curve of his calves. She walked to him, stood behind him, smelling the hint of green lemon and pinewood in his cologne, until he’d turned. But his face, when he turned, was not his own. Instead, it was all white, with the eyes blackened out, like the beaked masks worn by doctors in the plague or at carnival to terrify children. She recoiled and stepped back, wanting to turn and run. He caught her hand before she could escape and pulled her toward him. But before he pulled her into the abyss that was his mask, her dream filled with music and the monster disappeared.
The dream
faded, but the music remained, haunting, beckoning. She sat upright, listening; the dreamlike chords seemed to sound from everywhere. For a moment she let it lull her, then it struck her: the music room. Someone was playing the instruments. The elegant instruments Lord Roderick had acquired with such care hadn’t been played since his death. She’d offered Mr. Nathan, the music scholar, his own key to the room, but he had tugged on his beard dismissively. No, Miss Livvy, I study the music of the people. I don’t want the elite instruments of the wealthy. I want the humble reed pipe of the shepherd, the gut-stringed harp of the bard. I want the songs of the common man. The music room had remained unused and locked.
For her, the room was filled with memories of Roderick, who had been her second father. Roderick had taught her all the skills Mrs. Flint left out of her curriculum. Her own father’s tutelage had been of a different sort—how to reach her hand into a stranger’s pocket for a wallet or watch, or how to stand pitifully on the corner before a fine house, hand out, begging for a ha’pence to ease her churning stomach. Perhaps she had been lucky her father abandoned her. Even so, she had never been able to forget that he’d promised to return.
She wrapped a dressing gown tight over her nightshift and raised the flame of the oil lamp by her bedside. Splaying her household keys out across her palm, she identified the music room key by the decorative outline of a harp at its head.
The music room was beyond the corner where the family wing met the body of the main house, on the same level with the family bedrooms. After Sir Roderick’s death, only she slept in the family wing. Usually, after managing whatever commotion the scholars created, she found it peacefully quiet.
Tonight, however, knowing an intruder was in the music room, she wished briefly she had someone to lean on. But she had been on her own for so long that she likely wouldn’t know how to confide or even how to trust. She’d tried with Harrison. She shook off the momentary sadness—if Harrison had wanted this life, he would be here, taking care of a lute-playing intruder.
Her flame made dark shapes dance on the walls, but the melody drew her on.
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