When she stood again there were damp patches on her skirt and water dripping from her chin. Laurence smiled and wiped the droplets away with his fingers. Shelving her unease, Victoria laughed at him, the memory of the kiss still warm and happy inside her.
They swung up on to their horses, gathered their reins and splashed through the water, the horses bounding up the far bank. They moved across the moorland, sitting loose and relaxed in their saddles.
* * *
Laurence was well satisfied with the way things had turned out. He could only marvel at how much Victoria had lowered her defences toward him, like a wild horse gentled to his touch only. It was no small honour, for he knew how reticent she had been towards him, yet she had opened herself to him. Even now, he could feel her vulnerability and it made him tremble inside to see how much she trusted him when he wasn’t even sure if he could trust himself.
Victoria was a new world—a place of endless mysteries and unexpected delights, an enchanting mixture of woman and child. She could discuss most things with a clinical objectivity and a minute later blush all over when he looked at her in a certain way. She was as stubborn as a mule, haughty when it suited her, serene and inscrutable at times and at others a young girl. On their rides she would test his patience by riding off at a gallop and provoking him into chasing her. She would giggle for minutes at a secret thought. Sometimes she was so naïve that Laurence thought she was joking until he remembered how young she was. She could drive him from happiness to spitting anger and back again within the space of minutes.
But once he had won her confidence she responded to his kisses with a violence that startled them both. Laurence was completely absorbed in her. He told himself she was the best thing he had ever found.
* * *
During those halcyon days, as Victoria planned for her wedding, she was as happy as a bird at daybreak. And yet, although her feelings for Laurence were changing, her fear and uncertainties remained. She told herself that she would strive to overcome them, and when she looked at him they did ease, and all she felt was a deep and abiding tenderness and love.
* * *
‘I feel like a guest in my own house,’ Laurence laughingly remarked to Diana as they waited for Victoria and Aunt Libby to join them in the hall two days before the wedding.
At Aunt Libby’s suggestion, he’d moved into the Grange, where he planned to remain for the three days before the wedding. He’d graciously agreed to her suggestion because Aunt Libby was an adequate chaperon and Victoria’s reputation might suffer now that local society knew she was to marry him. In an isolated community, every scrap of gossip was pounced on and painted in dramatic overtones. And so it was with Lord Rockford and Victoria Lewis’s wedding. Victoria prepared herself for the coming event by ignoring the inevitable clouds of gossip and speculation collecting about her.
Impatient to see her betrothed, Victoria ran down the stairs to meet him in the hall. For a few seconds, Laurence and Diana remained stock still and looked at her in silence. She was so vividly alive, so radiantly beautiful in a dark-grey silk gown. A pair of the daintiest slippers peeped from the whirl of soft skirts and petticoats as she ran towards them.
‘I thought you were never coming,’ she announced. ‘You’re so late.’ She stopped, her face wreathed in smiles, and gazed at her future husband. Never had she seen him look so striking and handsome as he did now. His dark-claret jacket and trousers set off his broad shoulders and emphasised his long legs with a perfection that bespoke the finest London tailoring—his snowy-white neckcloth was tied to perfection and his hair was perfectly groomed. Even in his relaxed pose his tall body gave off the muscular power of an athlete, while his handsome features were stamped with the cool arrogance of his title.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t come?’ he asked, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. There was an intensity in his voice. It was apparent in his gaze that seemed to scorch the very air between them.
‘If it hadn’t been for me, Victoria,’ Diana said apologetically, ‘we should have arrived long ago. I was having a glass of wine with Nathan and spilt it down my skirts and had to change. I’m so sorry it made us late.’
‘Think nothing of it. It really doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry about your husband, Diana—that he isn’t here.’ Victoria would have had to possess the hide of an elephant not to know how deeply both Laurence and Diana felt Nathan’s absence from the wedding celebrations, but there was nothing she could do about it. At least he had received the news that Laurence was to marry her better than Laurence had hoped, but he’d refused to accompany him tonight.
‘You don’t have to worry, Victoria,’ Diana said with a smile. ‘He has agreed to stand with Laurence in the church. We will have to be content with that for the present.’
‘I’m so glad.’ Victoria would like to think that Nathan was beginning to soften towards her, but deep inside her she didn’t hold out much hope.
In an effort to put her anxieties concerning the wedding out of her mind, Victoria was determined to enjoy herself. Unfortunately the evening passed as if it were minutes, not hours, and all too soon it was time for Laurence and Diana to return to the Grange. Victoria went with them out to the carriage and when Laurence had assisted Diana inside, he turned to Victoria and took her in his arms.
‘I’ll see you in the church the day after tomorrow. And don’t worry. Everything will be fine.’
‘I know it will,’ she answered with a confidence she did not feel, for as the wedding came closer, her anxiety about what she was about to do increased. She had the insecure sense that she did not know the rules of the game Laurence was playing. They lived on separate islands in a society divided by an ocean of money and privilege. The thought troubled her.
Laurence kissed her for the last time. She returned his kiss, but her anxiety remained.
* * *
The day had come at last. The sun shone bright, shrouding the moors with golden promise.
Victoria was in a different world, peopled by beings quite different from those she had known. The wedding was to be a quiet affair, the ceremony at Ashcomb Church. She would have no relatives of her own at the wedding—not a single male relative to give her away. None of her friends would be there to give her encouragement, no kind, supportive Amelia. Not wanting to appear too frivolous, the only thing that had given Victoria pause for thought was the question of a wedding gown. Diana, sensitive to her mood and saying that she was sure her mother would have wanted her to look like any other bride on her wedding day, suggested an ivory-silk gown.
Victoria could not believe what was happening, for not only did her mind and her whole body churn with a mixture of feelings—she was sad because her mother was not here to see her married—but she was full of wonderment that she was to be the wife of a successful businessman and a rich landowner and would be mistress of his estate, but above all these feelings she was fearful of what lay ahead.
She was pale with nervousness. Diana came to help her prepare and Aunt Libby was fussing about like a mother hen. When she was ready they departed for the church, and it was left to Ned to take her in the carriage.
Alone in the drawing room, waiting for him to arrive, she restlessly walked up and down, wishing he would come so she didn’t have time to think. She told herself that she wanted to marry Laurence more than anything else. She loved everything about him—his smile, his looks, the brisk authority in his deep voice and the confidence in his athletic movements. She loved the way his eyes gleamed when he laughed and the way they smouldered when he kissed her.
Tearing her thoughts from Laurence, she stared bleakly out of the window. Yes, she loved many things about him but she was not a good judge of men. She had no experience of them. Laurence was attracted to her, this she did know. She had tried to convince herself that what she felt for him was gratitude and friendship, but she knew it
had gone much deeper than that and she was more than a little in love with him. But did he want her love?
Fear raced through her and panic began to set in. In less than an hour she was going to commit her entire life to a man who had once told her in the plainest terms that love had no place in marriage. Every instinct for self-preservation that she possessed warned her not to marry him. For the thousandth time she reminded herself that she was not of his world and never would be, and that instead of making him happy and making him love her she would make him miserable and herself, too—but her heart begged her to gamble everything on him and not to be a coward. Her mind, however, told her to turn and run.
Suddenly she was overcome by a heavy feeling of foreboding. The day had darkened—great clouds were rolling from the west over the moors and the sky was streaked orange and red behind them, dramatic, threatening. She felt chilled, anxious about the day. A sense of great unease stirred inside her along with a premonition of approaching danger. Giving herself a mental shake, she told herself she was being absurd, that it was the sudden change in the weather that had provoked this, but when Clara Ellingham stepped into the room from the terrace, she knew it wasn’t the weather.
Clara smoothed down the lustrous velvet of her riding habit, savouring the feel of the rich and expensive material beneath her hands. Her smile of self-satisfaction was evident, the diamonds in her ears as she threw back her head sparkled even in the dim interior of the room.
Looking into her eyes Victoria saw something swimming in their depths. A frisson of alarm slithered down her spine. Whatever it was she saw reminded her of a shark circling in deep water. She saw the malevolence, saw the paleness of Clara’s face and the high red colour on her cheek-bones.
‘Good morning,’ Victoria said tightly. ‘Visitors usually come in by the front door.’
Clara looked her up and down as if she were some beggar who had the temerity to accost her in the street. She smiled, showing her perfect teeth. ‘I’m not averse to using the back door—the servants’ entrance, which you will know all about.’ Her smile deepened. She would never forgive this upstart who had stolen the man she had earmarked for herself. But all was not lost. She still had hopes of getting him back, for she meant to destroy Victoria Lewis.
‘Look at you,’ she purred, ‘you scheming upstart.’ Clara looked down her long nose at Victoria. ‘You thoroughly believe yourself the equal of him, don’t you? You are of a different class and ill equipped to deal with the society he inhabits. Ever since you came here you have started to behave like the entitled rich, giving yourself airs of privilege without the pedigree that define them. You think that because Laurence is marrying you you can keep him, don’t you?’ She moved closer, her hostile eyes never leaving Victoria’s. ‘Well, when I’ve told you a few facts about your precious Laurence Rockford, he will be the last man in the world you will want to marry.’
‘Will you please leave? I have nothing I wish to say to you.’
‘I have plenty I want to say to you.’
‘Haven’t you said enough in the past?’
‘I think you need to hear what I have to tell you,’ Clara smoothly declared.
Her entire body vibrating with panic, Victoria faced Clara Ellingham. ‘And I have told you I don’t want to listen. Ever since I left the Academy and came to live here you have hounded me with your obsession for Laurence.’
‘And who do you think paid for that fancy education you received at the Academy in York? Who do you think bought you your fancy clothes?’
‘My mother.’
Clara thrust her face close to Victoria’s and laughed vindictively. ‘That’s what she told you, was it—what you assumed?’
Victoria stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That every penny of your education was paid for by Laurence. He knew how difficult it was for someone in your mother’s position to find the necessary funds to pay for your education. How lucky she was to have a male friend to pay for it all. I suppose he felt somehow beholden—which was why he sent you to that fancy Academy in York. Now how do you feel knowing that?’
Paralysed by her revelation, Victoria felt the blood drain from her face and her eyes had a haunted, almost desperate expression. ‘You’re lying.’
‘And you’re sure of that, are you?’
‘And for what reason would he feel beholden to my mother?’
‘Well, there is the matter of your mother and her morals.’
‘Her morals—good or bad—are nothing to do with you. She’s dead and cannot speak for herself.’
‘No, she can’t, can she—but the truth will out.’
‘Truth? The truth about what?’
‘Her sordid affair with Laurence’s father—and how she shamelessly flaunted it underneath his wife’s nose—but then I suppose gentlemen of the old Lord Rockford’s ilk are allowed their little indiscretions, are they not?’
Victoria looked at her and a searing white light seemed to dance in front of her eyes. She felt hot, blazingly, ragingly hot, and physically sick as she faced Clara Ellingham, and felt each of her enraged words as if it was a blow to her head, her voice speeding up faster and faster, spinning so quickly the next one appeared before the other had spun away. Clara held nothing back: Laurence financing her education—her mother’s scandalous affair with his father—something about a child, a son—Victoria’s half-brother—her mother had given him up to Lady Rockford and agreed with Lord Rockford that she would never see him.
Standing in the wreckage of her dream of marrying Laurence, the one just blasted by Clara Ellingham who had once threatened to bring her down, Victoria looked at her and started to speak, and all the hurt, all the betrayal she had ever felt were in her words.
‘Please leave. I think you have said everything you came to say.’
For the rest of her life Victoria, remembering that moment when the bottom had dropped out of her world, had thought of all the things she might have said and done, what appropriate, clever, sophisticated remark or gesture she might have made. What she actually did was to ask Clara to leave and then, with no emotion in her voice, she asked Jenkins to instruct Ned to bring the carriage, before going to her room, taking off her wedding gown and dressing in something more appropriate for travel.
She realised that beneath everything she had just learned just how much she actually loved Laurence, but now the security that she had found with him was gone. A lump rose in the back of her throat at the realisation that he was going to walk into Ashcomb Church thinking he was about to be wed, only his bride would have deserted him. On top of her earlier doubts about the marriage, the unease and insecurities, Clara Ellingham’s revelations had come as the final straw.
Deep down Victoria was furious, furious at the injustice done her. The walls of her castle had proved to be made of paper. She had felt the first cold draughts blowing through them as Clara Ellingham had walked into the room, and she had felt the walls tremble and the wind howl stronger outside when Clara had spoken her first condemning words—then they had collapsed into ruin around her feet.
The bloom on her face had withered until her expression was dead—blank and as dead as a statue—and she wondered if the strange pain in her heart would ever go away. Standing in the half-darkened room with her wedding dress and the frothy pile of her petticoats on the bed, she looked down the long, lonely corridor of the future. It was worse than tears would have been, that silent acceptance, thinking of the man she had trusted so completely and who just as completely had deceived her, had betrayed her. She felt more lonely than she could ever remember being in her life. She knew she could not stay. There was only one alternative.
‘What shall I tell his lordship?’ Sally asked as she was leaving.
Carrying her valise, Victoria turned in the doorway. ‘Tell him—tell him it was a mistake. Tell him I couldn’t g
o through with it.’
By the time she left the house the rain had begun, light and powdery, more mist than anything. After half an hour it was raining harder, grey sheets of water, and a driving wind had set in.
Chapter Eight
His expression unreadable, Laurence waited for his bride in Ashcomb Church. Nathan was at his side, the vicar in front of him, the marriage book open in his hands. As the minutes passed and Victoria failed to arrive, Nathan turned to look at his brother.
‘What do you intend to do?’ he asked.
‘We’ll wait.’
Laurence waited another thirty minutes in the asinine belief that Victoria would come. Refusing to believe that history was about to repeat itself, he waited. His eyes were colder than an icy winter sky and there was a thin white line about his mouth. Still they stood there, the two of them, facing the altar.
When the vicar came to have a word with Laurence, excusing himself, Nathan went to find Diana who was in the vestibule, looking worriedly along the road for any sign of the bride’s carriage.
‘I’ve heard of brides being late for their wedding, but this is taking it too far,’ Nathan complained crossly.
‘Something must have happened,’ his wife said. ‘You may be certain Victoria will have an excellent explanation for being late.’
‘Let us hope so—for her sake. To be jilted once at the altar is bad enough, but twice is not to be borne. Laurence will tear her to shreds if she doesn’t go through with it. I knew it was madness for him to propose marriage, but he wouldn’t listen.’
After a further half an hour and Victoria hadn’t arrived, Laurence sent the driver of his carriage to the Hall to see where she was. Eventually he was apprised of the fact that she had vanished from the Hall with Ned. Sally, her maid, was unable to throw any light on why she had suddenly discarded her wedding dress and gone, taking very little with her.
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