Yorkshire, he thought as he threw himself onto the hackney coach’s worn seat. Why did it have to be Yorkshire?
Chapter 17
From across the dining room, Lord Nathaniel studied her. When he bowed in greeting, she pulled herself free from Emily’s support and answered with a curtsy. If not recovered from her shock, she was nevertheless unwilling to supply him with further evidence of it. She had never fainted before. She did not intend to start now.
Slowly, she crossed the room with Emily and stopped before them. “Good evening, Grandfather.”
“Lord Nathaniel arrived just yesterday,” he explained. “When I told him you were expected, he insisted that I say nothing. It is a pleasant surprise to see an old family friend here, I trust?”
“It is a surprise,” Tempest replied with a thin smile. Now that he was only a few feet from her, she could see that while he had indeed survived the storm, he had not escaped from his ordeal at sea entirely unharmed. A deep cut at his hairline was still healing, and when he took a step forward, he moved stiffly, with the slightest hint of a limp.
“You weren’t worried, I hope?” Lord Nathaniel said.
“Indeed not.”
“Won’t you introduce me to your companion?”
Suddenly Tempest wished she had not revealed Mrs. Beauchamp’s full identity to her grandfather. The last person she wanted to involve in this conversation was the captain of the Fair Colleen. “Of course. This is Mrs. Emily Beauchamp. Mrs. Beauchamp, Lord Nathaniel Delamere.”
“A pleasure, my lord,” Emily said with another curtsy.
“Beauchamp,” Lord Nathaniel echoed thoughtfully. “Any relation to the Shropshire Beauchamps?”
“My late husband was brother to Lord Renfrew, yes.”
Lord Nathaniel nodded approvingly, and Tempest breathed an inward sigh of relief. Then he asked, “And how do you know Miss Holderin?”
“Well—” Emily began.
“You might also recognize the name Beauchamp from the family shipping line,” Tempest spoke over her. “I sailed from Antigua on a Beauchamp ship.”
“Yes, I know. Word of your—departure spread quickly through English Harbour.”
No one in the room knew Lord Nathaniel Delamere well enough to recognize the warmth in his eyes and his voice as anger. No one, that was, but Tempest. She forced herself to take a step closer to him. “I did not know you also had plans to travel,” she said. “I hope you did not do so out of concern for me. As you can see, I was always perfectly safe.”
A muscle spasmed in his cheek as he clenched his jaw. “You were perfectly safe in Antigua.”
“Now, there I would have to disagree,” said Sir Barton. “Deuced unhealthy. Wicked, too. Not a proper place for a young lady to live.”
How would you know? she wanted to object.
But Emily did her one better. “Have you been to the West Indies, then, Sir Barton?” she asked in that soft, musical, deceptively gentle voice of hers. “I was under the impression you had not.”
“Well, I—”
“I will vouch for Sir Barton’s opinion,” said Lord Nathaniel. “What a blessed relief to find myself on English soil once more.”
“It sounds as if you intend to stay,” Tempest said, unable to keep the note of hope from her voice.
Before he could answer, Porter announced that dinner was served. Lord Nathaniel proffered his arm, and she had little choice but to take it. Her grandfather escorted Mrs. Beauchamp to a chair on his right, while Lord Nathaniel led Tempest to the foot of the table. She realized she was to be seated opposite her grandfather, separated from Mrs. Beauchamp by half a dozen chairs. Lord Nathaniel, on the other hand, took the place beside Tempest, perfectly positioned for intimate conversation.
Beneath the scrape of chairs and the clatter of service, he whispered to her, “I intend to stay right by your side, my dear. But I suspect you knew that already.”
He reached for her hand as he spoke, but she snatched it away under the pretense of taking up her goblet.
In his letter, Edward had insisted that she would be safer in England, where Lord Nathaniel’s power would be checked by rules and customs that were less susceptible to corruption. Perhaps that was true. But she certainly was not free here, whatever Lord Mansfield had claimed. What a terrible mistake she had made in coming to Yorkshire. What a mistake to allow anything so irrational as sentiment to guide her choices.
“Did you find your room to your liking?” her grandfather called from the other end of the table.
“Yes, thank you.”
“It was your dear mama’s when she was a girl,” he explained. “So like her—bright and cheerful.”
“That she was,” Lord Nathaniel agreed. “A perfect angel.”
“That was her namesake, you remember. Angela.”
“Indeed I do.”
There was a wistful note in Lord Nathaniel’s voice that Tempest did not think she had ever heard there. Oh, she had listened to him talk of her mother many times, often with the intent of scolding her into better behavior. The sound of her name on his lips always brought with it a prickle of jealousy. Only an unjust God would keep a child from knowing her mother but grant such a man the privilege.
But something about the way he spoke now suggested a different sort of intimacy. Tempest had always understood the acquaintance had first been formed in Antigua, through her father, after her parents’ marriage. Was it possible Lord Nathaniel had known her as Angela Harper, known her here?
A more long-standing connection would go some way toward explaining his decision to come first to Yorkshire rather than seek Tempest out elsewhere.
“What can you tell us of the Christmas festivities in the neighborhood, Sir Barton?” Emily asked. Tempest shot her a grateful glance for the attempt to turn the conversation, although she could muster no enthusiasm for the particular subject. It was only another reminder that she was expected to stay through the holiday. Those few days would feel like forever.
“Festivities? You will no doubt find them sadly lacking, Mrs. Beauchamp. The neighborhood is quiet, the number of families small.”
“I was struck by the remoteness of Crosslands’ situation when we arrived,” Emily confessed. “Not terribly conducive to wassailing parties or the like, although with a carriage or two, or even a sleigh, people might . . .”
Her sentence trailed away when Lord Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Do they go in for such frivolities in the village?” he asked disdainfully. “I’m sure our host takes no particular pleasure in the thought of being descending upon by a horde of strangers, singing off-key and demanding a bowl of punch for their trouble.”
“Well, a quiet family party is often pleasantest,” Emily acknowledged, only slightly daunted. “When shall we decorate the house?”
“Decorate?” Sir Barton sputtered. “The house?”
“With boughs of greenery? Holly and such? Bows and bells?”
With each suggestion her grandfather’s eyebrows rose, as if Emily were speaking words in a foreign tongue and he suspected her of spouting profanities.
“Forgive me, sir,” she said at last. “I only imagined you would wish to show Miss Holderin a bit of holiday cheer. It is her first English Christmas.”
“But not, it is to be hoped, her last,” said Lord Nathaniel.
Tempest narrowly suppressed a shudder, but her grandfather nodded approvingly, Lord Nathaniel’s voice drawing his eye. He squinted along the length of the table, as if trying to bring the two of them into sharper focus. “Do you know, at this distance, I could almost persuade myself that a twenty-five-year-old wish had at last been granted.”
Mrs. Beauchamp soon recaptured her grandfather’s attention by suggesting further ways of imbuing Crosslands Park with the Christmas spirit. Distracted, Tempest caught only pieces of the conversation, but the gradually increasing slump of Sir Barton’s shoulders suggested Emily was wearing him down.
“You look perplexed, my dear.” Lord Nathanie
l spoke low, so that only Tempest could hear.
“What did my grandfather mean by it? What wish?”
“Can it be that your sainted father never told you?” he asked sardonically. “I suppose I should not be surprised. It was hardly his favorite memory—although his distaste for the truth did not make it any less true.” Triumph gleamed in his dark eyes. “Your dear mama and I were betrothed when she met that shopkeeper Thomas Holderin and decided to run away with him instead.”
“Betrothed?”
“With Sir Barton Harper’s blessing. I fancy he looked forward to hearing his daughter addressed as ‘my lady.’”
Despite the horror of Lord Nathaniel’s revelation, Tempest forced herself to remain calm. What was past was past, and Sir Barton’s wishes for his daughter need have no bearing on her future.
Yet she could not make herself drink. Or eat.
When the last dish was cleared, she pushed her chair back and stood before a footman could come to her aid. Emily rose, too. “If you will excuse us, Grandfather. We will leave you to your port,” she said and left.
But she did not retreat into the drawing room for tea. Instead she climbed the stairs with carefully measured steps.
Once more in her bedchamber, her mother’s bedchamber, she looked around at the springlike décor and tried to summon some memory, some spirit of the woman. What had been a pretty but unremarkable room, filled with flowers only familiar to Tempest from pictures in books, suddenly acquired new interest. She tried to imagine her mother surrounding herself with warmth and color and perpetual summer, antidotes to the cold, gray world in which she actually lived. Had Mama wanted to marry Lord Nathaniel? Or had she merely acceded to her father’s wishes until the promise of eternal summer was within her grasp?
“Back so soon, miss?” Hannah said, coming from the dressing room. Caliban trotted behind her, freshly washed. With pursed lips and a little frown, Hannah shooed him toward the fire, where he shook from head to toe before curling up to dry his fur.
“The journey fatigued me more than I realized,” Tempest made excuse. “I think I’ll retire. I’m certain a good night’s sleep will restore me to myself.”
“Yes, miss.”
Hannah had only just begun to help with the fastenings of her dress when Emily tapped at the door and entered without waiting for an invitation. For the first time, Tempest realized there was no lock. “Are you all right, dear?”
“She’s just tuckered out, ma’am,” Hannah supplied helpfully, but Tempest knew the answer would not satisfy Mrs. Beauchamp.
“I fear I have caused you distress. My insistence on your making this journey—”
“No, indeed,” Tempest said, not entirely truthfully.
“But this Lord Nathaniel person—forgive me.” She stopped herself, a note of indecision in her voice. “My son spoke of some persistent suitor you were forced to flee. I feared he might be the man.”
A single nod confirmed Emily’s suspicion. “Lord Nathaniel Delamere was most determined to marry me—the reason, I suppose, it was believed I should leave Antigua. But left to my own devices, I would have stayed. Lord Nathaniel is vile, but he doesn’t frighten me.”
“Left to your own devices,” Emily echoed warily. “That hints at coercion, force. Did Andrew—did my son have some hand in taking you away against your will?”
Tempest opened her mouth to reply, then darted a quick glance at Hannah, who was humming as she went about the work of brushing and hanging Tempest’s dress, paying no attention to their conversation. “Not exactly,” she said and briefly told the story of how she had come to find herself aboard the Fair Colleen. “So it was not, strictly speaking, kidnapping.” She narrowed her gaze as she studied the relief spreading over Emily’s features. “Could you believe it of him?”
Emily hesitated. “Once, no. After so many years, though, I could not be sure.”
“Gracious, miss,” Hannah exclaimed, drawing their attention. She had been peeling apart layers of undergarments and was frowning over a rusty mark. “Didn’t you know your courses had begun?”
Tempest stared for a long moment at the reddish-brown stain on the linen in Hannah’s outstretched hands, the sign she had been praying for, respite from the lapse in judgment that had been torturing her for weeks.
So why were there tears welling in her eyes and stinging the back of her throat?
“Oh,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around her waist to fight the trembling that threatened to overtake her. “Oh no.”
A shadow of concern crossed Emily’s face. “Are you all right, dear?”
Hannah bustled about, cleaning her up and helping her into a fresh nightgown. “Now, don’t you fret, miss. I’ll fetch you a clout and then just take all this down to the kitchen and put it to soak. No harm done.”
Tempest hardly heard the maid’s chatter. How could she suddenly find herself mourning the loss of something she ought never to have had, something that had never really existed? Had she really been hoping for something so unutterably foolish? A child—a girl with her mother’s eyes and a sweet, heart-shaped face . . . framed with raven hair.
“I’m fine,” Tempest said, shaking off both the mental image and Emily’s assistance in getting into bed. “Never better. I can’t think what came over me just now.”
Birdlike, Emily tipped her head to one side and studied her. “Oh?”
“I assure you, Mrs. Beauchamp, I am never ill,” she insisted, attempting to hide her secret, her shame, behind the more formal address, although she had little hope Emily would not see through the mask with those bright eyes of hers.
“I’ve no doubt that’s true, dear.” Emily paused, evidently waiting for Hannah’s departure. “Nonetheless,” she continued when the door had closed behind the girl, “I thought you might welcome the excuse for a day or so in bed. It would give you a bit of time to think. And a little space to breathe.”
“True,” Tempest conceded. A day without having to speak with either her grandfather or Lord Nathaniel would be most welcome right now.
As Emily leaned forward to tuck in the blankets around Tempest’s sides, her heavy locket swung forward and caught the light. Tempest watched it settle into the hollow of her bosom once more when she sat back on the edge of the bed. “Emily, what’s in that locket? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you without it.”
“This?” Her fingers curled reflexively around it. Flicking the clasp, she displayed the contents to Tempest: an oval portrait of a man—Daniel Beauchamp, she presumed—stern-faced and bewigged, in a style popular a decade or more ago. Facing it, behind a bubble of glass, lay a lock of dark hair, braided and coiled.
“A memento of your husband,” Tempest murmured, suddenly embarrassed at having pried.
“Both my husbands,” Emily corrected. “The portrait is a likeness of Mr. Beauchamp, though not a very good one, I’m afraid. Makes it look as if he had the toothache,” she said, staring at the picture, her own features soft and fond, as if she could coax an answering smile from oil and vellum. “The love lock came from Patrick Corrvan, when we were courting. ’Twas all the gift he could afford.”
“Captain Corrvan is very like his father, I suppose?” Tempest ventured after a moment, wishing there were a picture of Emily’s first husband, merely so Andrew’s face could be before her again.
Emily nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “In looks, certainly. Both too handsome for their own good.” Tempest felt a blush rise to her cheeks. “But Andrew’s steadier than his da ever was,” she insisted, “whatever he chooses to believe of himself.”
“Ah.” She could think of nothing else to say as she watched Emily restore the locket to its customary place, tucked into the bodice of her dress, close to her heart.
“Daniel knew I kept it, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said with a small smile, seeing the direction of her gaze. “Patrick’s memory was no threat to Daniel. I loved them both, each in his own way. No question Daniel was the better provi
der. But without Patrick . . . well, there’d be no Andrew.”
“You have no regrets, then? Even though—” Even though they broke your heart?
She stopped herself before the words could pass her lips. Her earliest memory had been of Papa mourning her mother’s death. In truth, he had mourned her until his dying day. Tempest had tried, over the years, to persuade herself that his devotion ought to have given her a favorable notion of love and marriage, a counterpoint as it were to the marriages founded on nothing more than wealth or status. She had no doubt that her father had loved her mother.
But she had never been able to fathom giving up a part of herself only to be rewarded with pain.
“Even though they died and left me alone?” Emily finished for her. “Yes. I have been sad, at times. But I have also been so very, very happy. Grief cannot take that away. You’ll understand, someday. When you marry.”
“I’ll never marry.”
Emily’s brows curved inward. “Never?”
“What is there in marriage to benefit me? I am not poor, so I do not require another’s support or security. I need not fear spinsterhood for that reason, certainly.”
“Mightn’t you be lonely, dear?”
“May not a single lady of fortune travel, correspond, call and be called upon by her friends?” Tempest countered. “Miss Wollstonecraft says that a proper education allows a woman ‘to support a single life with dignity,’ and Papa certainly gave me that.”
“Miss Wollstonecraft? The radical author?”
“It pleases people to call her so, but I for one find her principles quite sensible.”
“I confess I have not read her works. I know that she is said to be sympathetic to those terrible French republicans.”
“It would be more accurate to say that she is sympathetic to cries for liberty, from whatever corner they may come.”
Emily nodded. “I can understand how her ideas might offer support for your plans regarding your grandfather’s plantation, but why should those same principles require one to fight such a difficult battle alone?”
To Tempt an Heiress Page 22
