But the point was that it mattered not. He looked at his cousin with a healthy dose of disgust, but with no fear at all.
“I suppose I see the truth of that,” he conceded. “Your own foolishness and snobbery have served you well, in this instance, Toby. I can easily believe that you would never imagine the value of another human being if you believed them to be lower than yourself.
“However,” he continued, and then abruptly, in a fluid motion, he strode to the wall and seized one of the swords.
“I believe that you were spoiling for a fight when I entered the room earlier, and a fight is what you shall get. You insulted a lady earlier…” at this moment, he swept out his arm to level the sword at his cousin’s chin, moving so swiftly that Sir Toby leapt back.
“That lady will one day be sitting in this drawing room as mistress in this house,” he continued. “And when she does, you will go down on your knees and beg her pardon for your vile behavior. And if you do not, then you will have me to contend with.”
He removed the sword from his cousin’s face so quickly that it made a whipping sound through the air. Sir Toby had gone as white as marble under the layer of drunken ruddiness, and he had suddenly grown very still.
Coward, Adam thought dismissively. One good thing about men like Toby is that they are so predictable because everything that they do is governed by fear alone.
He had undertaken a vow to himself — a vow that he would no longer allow himself to be governed by fear. He had no wish to see himself as a cowering mess on the couch, the way that Sir Toby was at that moment.
He knew what Sir Toby had intended to provoke through his taunting. He knew that his cousin was trying to get him to go up to his father’s chamber, to disturb his sickbed and beg and plead for his inheritance.
Well, he thought grimly, Sir Toby does not know me very well at all. He does not know that I would choose my honor over money and social position any day.
Instead, he left the house and walked to the lake. It had become the place where he went when he needed to mull things over. But even apart from that, it had also become the place where things seemed to fall into place for him — whether good or bad.
It was the beginning of the evening’s light, and the shadows had begun to dance across the grounds. They filled up the lawns and distorted all the shapes, making the hedges turn into crouching beasts and the trees tower with a graveness that made them seem impenetrable.
When Adam got to the side of the lake, he stood for a while, staring at the shadows. The light was so distorted that it took him a while to notice the dark figure standing on the lake’s opposite shore.
The woman was standing on the other edge of the lake once again.
She had that same strange, still, haunted quality, so that Adam’s first impulse was to reassure himself that she was corporeal, and not some hallucination, or else the angered spirit of Mary Warwick, walking the banks of the lake where she had died.
But he was sure that she was real.
He could not make out the woman’s features, but from the way that her head was directed, he could see that her eyes were fixed, not on Adam himself, but on a little jetty that extended into the water, where his father often enjoyed an afternoon’s fishing. It was believed that it was that same jetty where Mary and Freddie had been pushed into the water.
It was apparent that the woman had not yet seen Adam. Silently, almost without deciding consciously to do so, he began to walk around the side of the lake toward her, moving with the same care as a hunter might when stalking a deer.
The woman appeared to be so lost in thought that she did not perceive him, and by the time that Adam had rounded the final little clutch of trees she still had not moved. Indeed, he was almost upon her when he stepped on a twig, and she turned around, clearly startled out of her reverie, her countenance quite white.
Adam stopped dead. How could he not?
He had recognized the young lady immediately.
Chapter 36
Charity knew after she had bade goodbye to Esther, that the time had come for her to return to her father’s house.
Not with the intention of throwing herself on his mercy. No, she had no plans to do any such thing. But she knew her father well, and she knew that behind his veneer of coldness he would likely be very fearful for her wellbeing. She felt that as a daughter, she owed it to her father to set his mind at ease, to show him that she was safe.
As she walked up the lane to the vicarage, the lane that she had walked so many hundreds and thousands of times several times a day for all of her life, she noticed that every aspect of the experience seemed entirely new.
It was as if she was smelling the blossoms that were just starting to peek out from the trees for the very first time. The very crunch of the gravel and dirt beneath her shoes sounded different. Perhaps that was because, instead of her usual shoes, she was wearing a pair of Mary Warwick’s old laboring boots.
Mrs. Warwick had remarked that they would serve her much better if she wished to ‘go tramping about the country’, and by some miracle, she was the exact same size as Mary Warwick, in her dress as well as her shoes.
Perhaps it should have unnerved her to wear the clothing and shoes of a dead woman, but it did not. She felt as though Mary Warwick’s spirit was walking with her as a companion.
Mary seemed to be with her now, pointing out to her the sweet sound of the birdsong and the fresh scent of the grass, which was damp and fragrant under a layer of spring rain.
The walk to the vicarage from Mrs. Warwick’s seemed to take longer than it usually did, perhaps because Charity was living every moment of it so intently. She almost forgot to be apprehensive at the thought of seeing her father, though doubtless, he would not greet her kindly.
But her father, it seemed, was not at home.
She knew something was out of character as soon as the maid opened the door. Charity had known the woman for almost her whole life, and apparently, the maid had been instructed not to let Charity into the house. Instead, she dithered in the doorway, then mumbled that ‘the master was not at home’.
“Is he at church?” Charity asked.
The maid shook her head helplessly, and Charity sighed with a little impatience.
It seemed to her that if her father was not at home in the daytime, then there was not another place that he would be. But nonetheless, something struck her as a little odd about the fact that her father was not there. As a rule, he always used Friday afternoons to sit in his study and put the finishing touches on his sermon for Sunday. The Reverend Miller was a man of very regular habits, and she could scarcely remember the last time that he had broken this routine.
But the maid was not lying. Charity walked around the side of the house to the window of her father’s study and found it to be empty.
Feeling a little deflated — perhaps because she had been bracing herself for a grand confrontation — she went away down the garden steps.
The vicarage was only a few minutes’ walk from the churchyard, but the little walk had none of the pleasant character of her earlier stroll. Instead of being lit up by the sensations of love and the beauty of nature, Charity occupied herself with fretting.
Where was her father, and what had happened to make him discard his usual manner of doing things? Had her leaving the household thrown him into some strange fit, which was causing him to behave intemperately?
The guilt crept into her thoughts. Although she knew rationally that she had nothing to blame herself for, that her father had chosen to cast her out of the house, she could not help but think how she might better have smoothed over the situation, have stopped him from distressing himself.
It was that kind of thought she always had when she was around her father and that same kind of thinking that she had been free from over the previous days while she had been staying with Mrs. Warwick. It occurred to her that she did not know if she could continue to live with the way she always had with the threat
of her father’s wrath hanging always over her head.
Perhaps, she reasoned, it is time for me to dispel it, right now. No one else can take that feeling of nervousness away from me. Only I can do it for myself, and so do it for myself, I must.
For a moment she stood still outside the churchyard, mulling over this thought.
And then it seemed to her that a weight was finally lifted, a weight that she had carried for so long that she scarcely recognized what it felt like to be without it.
When she proceeded into the church, her step was very light. Little did she know that there were things inside the church that would alter all her perceptions of the world once again.
Chapter 37
“Miss Campbell?” Adam burst out, his voice alive with shock.
He had meant to confront the woman calmly and sternly, accosting her to explain herself, and demand to know what her part had been in all this business. But the sight of Miss Campbell, of all people, had caught him completely off his guard. He felt as though he had been plunged into the lake itself, and now was left standing there, gasping for air.
“Mr. Harding!” Miss Campbell replied, her voice shaking with evident shock. “I did not expect to see you here.”
“Well, that is clear enough,” Adam replied, noting that his own voice had dropped almost to the level of a growl. “What is your business here?”
Miss Campbell was evidently taken aback by the curtness of his greeting, and for a moment Adam himself wondered whether he had been unwise. Surely he would have been better advised to greet her with the cordiality that their casual acquaintance deserved, and to ask her what she did in the grounds of his father’s estate.
Why should she not be here, after all? A great many local people came to this spot to enjoy the beauty of the lake.
But there was something in the countenance of Miss Campbell when he saw her standing there, that made it quite evident to him that he had caught her in a position where she was greatly alarmed and frightened to be trapped. This alerted Adam at once to the feeling that Miss Campbell had something to fear.
He found himself once again feeling like a hunter — one who has, through that sixth sense that the most exceptional hunters possess — discerned that the chase is drawing to a close.
“I walk here often,” Miss Campbell replied. “My father is your father’s steward, and I grew up on these grounds.”
Adam had known this before -— of course, he had — but it did not seem like a good enough reason to him. He had a strong, unmistakable feeling that Miss Campbell was searching for excuses to explain her presence, and if he were to press further, then the whole thing should be unraveled.
He glanced at her dress. It was of black cambric, of fabric very similar to that which had been found clutched in little Freddie’s fist. Perhaps every young lady possessed such a dress; how could he know? Yet, he suspected if one were to look, they would find a patch of material to repair the garment concealed somewhere within its folds.
A dozen scenarios were flashing across his mind, each more extraordinary than the last. Had Miss Campbell had some connection with Mary Warwick that might have caused her to nurture a grudge?
An even more dreadful idea occurred to him. Was he to believe that Charity had been entirely deceived about her friend’s nature, or did he also need to reconsider about everything he thought to be true about the woman he loved?
All this flashed through his mind as he stood looking at her.
“I have seen you here before,” he said. “Your presence here seems inauspicious, given what took place here.”
Miss Campbell was frowning in such a way as to suggest that she truly did not understand his meaning, although the pallor of her face and the strangeness of her expression indicated that this was no ordinary evening stroll.
“It is a sad spot,” she agreed, “yet even sad spots such as this can retain their beauty, and I come here often to think.”
“What can you mean?” The cracking of her voice made Adam believe that she truly was shocked by his words, and yet the angered son and brother in him continued to press.
Although it went against the grain of his conscience to cause any distress or intimidation to a lady, he could not prevent himself from raising his voice as he replied, “Do not play the innocent!”
“I do not,” Miss Campbell said, and Adam discerned a tear overspilling her eye and dripping down her cheek, with the slow progress of summer rain. “I know I am far from an innocent party in this affair, and I know a great deal more than you do. However, I believe that you have misunderstood the circumstances.”
“What is there to misunderstand?” Adam replied. His breathing was coming in short gasps, and all he could think of was the memory of little Freddie, dead, his face so pale that it looked like the carved marble of a cherub in a cold church. “I see only what is evident before me, and the evidence suggests that you killed Mary and Freddie.”
“Killed them? Never!” Miss Campbell’s face, which had been a picture of distress, abruptly became steely, and the light of inner strength seemed to shine through her eyes. “I could never do such a thing.
“That is, I am sure, what everyone would say,” Adam replied. “Yet the fact of the matter is that someone did kill them, and I believe that someone to be a woman. A woman, indeed, who wore a dress much the same as the one that you wear at this moment.”
“A woman?” Miss Campbell’s tone became shocked, derisive. “Rest assured, Mr. Harding, a woman was not responsible for what happened to Mary and Freddie.”
“You say that,” Adam challenged, “in such a manner that suggests to me that you know a great deal more than you have expressed thus far. If you are so sure that it was not a woman who committed this crime, then perhaps you will enlighten me.”
“I cannot tell you what happened,” Miss Campbell replied slowly. Adam was reminded of a conversation with Charity, in which she had mentioned that Esther was always wise and cautious in her speech. He wondered now whether that caution was concealing a deeper propensity to lie and manipulate. “I cannot make accusations,” she said. “All that I can say is that I saw something on the day that they died.”
“Then tell me,” Adam said sharply. “In God’s name, if you wish me to believe in your innocence then you will tell me everything you know.”
“Gladly,” replied Miss Campbell, and the tears began to flow over her cheeks once again. “I have been clasping this secret close to my breast for a year, and it has caused me such terrible suffering. It will be a great relief to set it free.”
Adam stepped closer, and he could see that the motion alarmed Miss Campbell.
It suddenly occurred to him that he was a young man, quite alone with a weeping young woman, at the turn of twilight. Anyone who saw them together might easily misunderstand what was passing between them. He realized that even though manners were far from his mind in that moment, he needed to conduct himself in a gentlemanly fashion.
After all, if the girl were innocent, as she claimed, then it would be a terrible thing indeed to cause her still further distress.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, but this time when he spoke his voice was a great deal gentler. Miss Campbell seemed to take some comfort from his change of tone and drew in a deep breath to steady herself.
“I was walking in the grounds of the house on the day that Mary and Freddie died,” she said softly, the quiet volume of her voice contained a great upwelling of emotion. “I have always loved to walk here, yet feared that it was not the proper thing to do. As such, I have always done my best not to be seen, and believe that I have developed some skill on that score.”
“Not so much skill,” Adam replied. “Since I have returned, I have seen you twice, standing here by the lake.”
“The lake always makes me forget myself,” Miss Campbell replied, a little dreamily. “I am not a young woman given to romance or sentiment, Mr. Harding. I am sure that Charity has told you that. But all of our hearts
are touched by something or another, and for me, I am always struck by the beauty of the scenery here.
“But that is by-the-by. What matters is that I was walking here that day and enjoying the sight of the lake without being seen myself. I intermittently heard noises on the other side, and so sought to conceal myself.”
Adam listened intently. He had heard nothing so far in Miss Campbell’s story that made him doubt it, but nothing that particularly made him believe it either.
“I could hear raised voices — a man and a woman. I saw Mary Warwick, whom I recognized, and a man whom I saw only from a distance. He had grey hair and was older, and as such, I made the natural assumption, given where I was. At the time, Mr. Harding, I am afraid that I believed it was your father.”
Charity Falls for the Rejected Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 21
