The Stolen Bride

by Jo Beverley

  Jane laughed. “Are there many young ladies in the kingdom who would regard being a duchess with such alarm? Really, Sophie, there’s no need to fret over it. Chelmly’s healthy as a horse and lives a safe and quiet life. As you say, you doubtless have only to present him with a well-chosen bride and he’ll settle happily to filling a nursery.”

  At the thought of nurseries, Sophie looked over at the Stanforth’s first child, two-year-old Stephen, who was making a gallant but fortunately futile attempt to climb the spreading beech tree which shaded his mama. In the mistaken belief that the tree was animate, Stephen stood before it, arms raised, and imperiously demanded, “Up! Up!”

  All the ladies laughed. “Stevie, the tree cannot lift you,” said Chloe. “When you’re older you may climb it but not now.”

  The boy first looked dubious, then mutinous. Then he gave up on the tree and looked around for other tall creatures. He made his choice and trotted speedily toward the nearest fielder on the Ashby team. He took up his stance and said, “Up! Up!”

  Sophie saw Chloe make as if to lunge out of her chair, but her grandmother restrained her. “Let be, Chloe. He don’t eat little ones for breakfast.”

  For Stevie had run to Piers Verderan. This was no great surprise. To his mother’s alarm, Stevie had conceived a violent attachment to the tall, handsome man who owned the nickname of the Dark Angel and a very unsavory reputation to go with it.

  Verderan looked down at the child. “No, brat,” he said, with no trace of fondness. “And if you’re hit by the next ball it’ll serve you right.”

  Instead of setting up a wail as he would have done with his parents, Stevie studied the man thoughtfully and then sat down plump between his legs to gather daisy heads.

  Verderan was turning to Chloe to complain when a cry spun him back in time to intercept a ball thoroughly walloped by Frederick heading straight for the child. He threw the ball back to the bowler then tucked the child under his arm, walked over and dropped him ungently by his mother. Without a word he returned to his place in the field.

  Chloe took a firm hold of her son’s gown when he attempted to follow Verderan again. “No, you bad boy.” She turned to her grandmother. “How is it that this child has no discrimination? That man is a dueler. He has killed two men!”

  “I hear they wanted killing,” replied the pragmatic duchess. “I gather that as much as his money kept him out of the hands of the law.” She laid a hand on her granddaughter’s arm. “Neither we nor the Wraybournes are overly keen to have the man in our homes, but he is one of Randal’s closest friends. As long as he is willing to behave correctly we can accept him. You can hardly say he is working to attract the child.”

  “I don’t understand it,” complained Chloe. “His father spoils Stevie. The duke dotes on him and all the staff at the Towers are slaves to his dimples. Yet the person he haunts is Verderan, who just scowls at him and tells him to go away.”

  “Perhaps that’s the secret of his charm,” said the duchess cynically. “With women at least. There’s many a woman can’t stand to see a man ignore her.”

  At that point Frederick was caught out and Sophie bounced to her feet. “At last,” she said. She hastily pinned back her rose-sprigged muslin and hurried out to bat. When she found she was facing Randal as bowler, she grinned cheekily, confident of a soft toss—especially as she’d pinned her skirt to show a good few inches of her calves.

  True enough, the ball was popped gently down and she swung mightily, sending the footman fielding deep nearer the coppice off running. With a cry of triumph she hitched her skirt a little higher and ran down the pitch and back, crossing her brother, David, both ways.

  When she stopped before the footman had reached the ball, David Kyle called, “Run again, Sophie!”

  “No,” she said pertly. “I prefer to be in to bat. Randal wouldn’t send you soft balls.”

  David turned to his friend. “Are you going to stand for that, Randal?”

  “And how would you bowl to Jane, then?” was the amused reply.

  David laughed and looked over at his wife, sitting awaiting her turn at bat, long hair in a braid and hat carelessly abandoned by her side. She blew him a kiss ...

  Randal poked him. “I have bowled, Sophie has walloped it, and you’re supposed to be running.” David hastily sprinted down the pitch, then refused to run back, despite Sophie’s shouts.

  “I have to get a turn somehow,” he called.

  “Are you perhaps avoiding me?” murmured Lord Randal to his betrothed, now at his end of the strip of grass. “Always trying to keep to the other end of the pitch.”

  Sophie felt his lips brush softly at her nape and turned suddenly, but he had already gone. It was always the same. Brief promises that never amounted to anything.

  She watched him hungrily, the sheer beauty of the man a painful pleasure. In loose canvas trousers and an open-necked white shirt he was still the most elegant man in the world. His bright yellow curls were naturally windswept and yet some would pay a coiffeur a fortune to achieve the effect.

  He turned and ran back, tossing a hard, fast ball at his friend, who turned it, but not far enough for a run.

  “I don’t think I am the one doing the avoiding,” said Sophie sharply as Randal strolled back past her.

  He stopped and rubbed some dirt off the ball against his trousers. “Don’t pick a fight here, Sophie,” he said gently. “It’s rather public.”

  “Since you avoid being private with me—” But he had gone and was preparing to make his run. She could have screamed.

  The bowling changed without David scoring and Sophie found herself nervously facing Piers Verderan. He deserved his nickname of the Dark Angel, for he was nearly as beautiful as Randal but what is commonly called a “black Irish.” His curls were dark, his eyes were a startlingly deep blue, and there was something devilish about him.

  Though Verderan had behaved with perfect propriety over the past few weeks, he made Sophie nervous. She saw the way he smiled at her and knew this would be no easy toss.

  She was right. It was hard and straight. She got the bat between it and the stumps but only to deflect it into her beloved’s waiting hands. “Out,” said Randal with satisfaction.

  She walked past him toward the seats. “If you wanted me out, why didn’t you bowl harder?” she said.

  He spoke for her ears alone. “I am learning to do without what I want, Sophie. At least for a little while.”

  She looked at him. Was that a promise for the future?

  “At least now,” he said sternly, moving away even as she stepped closer. “You can go and unkirtle your gown so the whole county isn’t admiring your ankles.”

  Sophie stuck her tongue out at his back.

  She returned to the spectators and slumped down on the shaded bench to look darkly at her beloved husband-to-be. The man was going to drive her mad. She had thought her every dream had come true when Randal offered for her hand but now things were not as she would want them at all. She had dreamed of long walks together, the sharing of souls and kisses but instead he almost seemed to be avoiding her.

  She had known Randal since childhood and adored him just as long. How had they come to this pass? Her mind slid back irresistibly to the time when she realized what he meant to her.

  She had been just fifteen that summer and still of an age to play tomboy when Randal would let her. They had gone fishing in the river which marked the boundary between her family’s land and his, at a special spot they called the Magic Pool. Her brother Frederick and Randal’s sister Cecilia were with them but had taken positions a little further along the bank, out of earshot. It was a hot day and Randal and Frederick both took off their jackets and waist-coats. Sophie boldly stripped off her cotton stockings and laced slippers despite Cecilia’s protests. Randal and Frederick, called upon to exercise authority, merely laughed.

  The angling was good and there were a number of trout in the creel when Randal decided to try for a larg
e pike known to haunt this spot. On his first cast, however, his hook snagged on some weeds. After watching him try to pull it free, Sophie hitched her skirts up high and waded out to clear it. When she turned, triumphant, she saw the first seriously disapproving look Randal had ever given her.

  “For heaven’s sake, Sophie, you’re too old for that sort of thing. Don’t your governesses teach you anything?”

  She was bruised a little by her idol’s displeasure, but answered with her usual pertness, “Not if I can help it.”

  His frown didn’t lift. “Get out of there and rearrange your skirt.”

  Abashed, she obeyed. “Why are you angry, Randal? You never used to mind me wading.”

  “You weren’t fifteen then,” he said tersely. “It’s time you grew up, minx.”

  She blinked away tears. “I’m not sure I want to if I’m not allowed to have any fun and everyone is angry with me.”

  He smiled then and came over to wipe away a tear with a gentle finger. “Never fear, little flame. You’ll take to being a woman like a duckling takes to the river.”

  Something stirred within her, softly, tentatively, like a new and fragile leaf pushing up out of the ground. She looked up and his familiar beauty—his fine-boned face, his clear blue eyes, and chick-soft buttercup curls—took on a new and frightening glamour. “What will happen when I’m a woman?” she asked with conscious naivete.

  He turned away slightly, but she saw his lips twitch. “You won’t be able to take your stockings off in public for a start.”

  “Is that all?”

  He turned back and there was a strange expression on his face. Was it only the sunlight falling speckled through the leaves which made him look wistful? “No, of course not. Hundreds and hundreds of men will gather around you like moths, little flame, and one of them, one lucky man, him you will choose to burn.”

  The leaf unfurled to the sunlight and grew, and swelled. But it was a strange and frightening process and Sophie flinched away. “Why would I want to burn anyone?” she asked.

  He grinned, and was the old Randal again. “Now that proves you’re not a woman yet, minx. Why don’t you catch me something to use as bait?”

  Mind spinning with a host of new and strange ideas, Sophie obediently cast a small baited hook and pulled in a dace. She speared it live onto his hook without a shudder, because he’d trained her that way. Head bent to her task, Sophie struggled to make sense of it all.

  Her feelings were unformed and poorly defined but she knew. In her childish adoration she would unhesitatingly have fixed herself upon the hook had he asked. But in an emotion much deeper and more potent she wanted to put some sort of hook into him, to capture and hold him....

  It had taken time for Sophie to truly absorb that she was in love with Randal, and what it meant, but from then on she had planned her life with that in mind.

  When she had gone to London this spring to make her debut she had been sure that Randal would finally see her as a woman and claim her as his own. Her heart had broken when she had realized this wasn’t to be.

  It had been that dreadful night which had changed everything—the night when Sir Edwin Hever had been confronted by her brother, David, and accused of being the rapist who had preyed upon the women of the city for months. Sir Edwin had taken her hostage and her very life had been in danger until Randal had risked an almost impossible shot to save her.

  Even now, sitting in the warmth of the sun, Sophie shivered at the memory. Sir Edwin had been quite, quite mad. She had fainted, she remembered, and only come to her senses in her bedchamber, in Randal’s arms. He had held her as she recovered from the shock. Her brother had found them there. The next day Randal had formally offered for her and been accepted.

  Any gentleman found in a maiden’s bedchamber, with said maiden in his arms, was bound to offer marriage. Why had that not occurred to her for months? Why did it haunt her now?

  Randal seemed so cool at times. He positively avoided being alone with her. Despite words of love, had he been trapped into this betrothal? Sophie could not bear it if that was so. In fact Sophie’s love for Randal was so deep and selfless that if freedom was what he wanted, she would give it to him.

  But that only left her the two weeks before the wedding to make such a terrible decision.

  Shadows were lengthening across the rolling lawns when the high-born members of the teams wandered back to the Castle while the servants cleared away the stumps and chairs. They found the family coach just pulling up to the porte cochere.

  Jane hurried forward as the steps were let down.

  “Beth,” she exclaimed happily, then stopped in surprise as Marius Fletcher stepped down first and turned to help her friend.

  “We met Sir Marius stranded on the way,” said Beth as she went to embrace Jane. “But we have another passenger too, I’m afraid.”

  “Why afraid, Mrs. Hawley?” asked David as he came forward to shake hands.

  “Well, my lord, she’s a bit of a mystery,” said Beth as Sir Marius lifted the unconscious woman out. She quickly recounted the events.

  “We were expecting no one today except you,” said Jane, “and I haven’t hired any staff from far afield. We must put her to bed, though, and call the doctor.”

  This was soon arranged. Beth was relieved of responsibility for the invalid and taken to her own bedchamber to freshen herself after the journey. She almost felt she should protest at being given what was obviously a choice guest room—after all she had only been Jane’s governess—but it was clear neither Jane nor her husband would hear of any objection.

  It was the loveliest bedchamber she had ever had for her own. A deep rich carpet was spread on the oak floor and red damask curtains hung at the long windows and from the canopy over the large bed. As Sir Marius had said, the Castle might be hundreds of years old but the Kyles didn’t stint themselves of comfort.

  One of the casement windows was open to the evening breeze. Beth went to the seat which filled the embrasure and gazed with delight over the lake to rolling hills set with stands of trees. Swans and ducks placidly cruised the water while peacocks stalked the lawns nearby, occasionally giving their plaintive screech.

  Beth turned at a scratch and called, “Enter.”

  Jane came in and hugged her friend. “I am so pleased to have you here at last, Beth. Isn’t Stenby beautiful?”

  “It is indeed, Jane. You must be happy in your home.”

  Jane sat on the chest at the foot of the bed. “So very much. David likes to stay here most of the time, you know, and I have no argument with that. In fact, to be honest, I’ll be delighted when the wedding is over and we can go back to the quiet times of the early summer.”

  “It must be a great deal of work. I remember your wedding, and that was quite an affair.”

  “I really don’t mind,” said Jane. “The organization is merely a challenge, and one I enjoy. The tangle here is Sophie and Randal. He has become a glutton for propriety, unlikely as that may seem, and when they are here I have to spend more time than I can afford playing chaperone. It’s not a role I’m comfortable with at the best of times. I am hoping,” she said with a winning smile, “that you will take the task off my hands.”

  “If Sophie wants someone to play propriety,” said Beth, “I will be happy to oblige.”

  “Since propriety seems to be the price for Randal’s presence,” said Jane drily, “Sophie wants propriety. Those two are enough to drive me distracted. Anyway, the real reason I came is to tell you about our mysterious visitor.”

  “Do you know who she is, then?”

  “No,” said Jane. “Perhaps I should have said ‘to tell you how little we know about our mysterious visitor.’ The maid found a secret pocket when she undressed her. It contained quite a lot of money and the key to her valise but there’s no indication as to who she might be. She has a card case in her reticule but it’s empty. There’s a letter addressed to Edith, but there’s no address on it so it must have been pa
rt of a packet.”

  “How peculiar. And yet she seems a lady.”

  “I think so. There’s the money—she’s carrying nearly a hundred pounds—and her clothes are good quality even if not new. There are a few pieces of jewelry, all very good. Her wedding ring is solid and she wears a new mourning ring of silver set with jet. No one can imagine why she was coming to Stenby, even though she had the announcement of Sophie’s wedding torn from the Gazette.”

  “Good heavens,” exclaimed Beth. “Surely she is a relative, then. There must be people on the fringes of the Kyles who are forgotten.”

  “That is possible,” said Jane dubiously. “But Mortimer acts as family archivist and he’s sure there are no Ediths that he has ever heard of. Another strange thing is that she was carrying a pistol, powder, and shot.”

  “Well,” remarked Beth. “A woman traveling alone might think that wise.”

  “That’s what David said. He took it, though, in case she is out of her senses when she recovers.”

  “A mystery and an adventure,” remarked Beth, with twinkling eyes. “And I’ve always lived a quiet life.”

  “Indeed,” said Jane, “but I could have done without excitement just now. The doctor says the blow to the head is not serious but that the woman seems weak as if she had been ill. We are likely to have her on our hands for ages if we can’t identify her and find her relatives, and I will need her room for wedding guests. And her family will be concerned. David is having inquiries made about her on the coaching routes.” With a practical shrug she abandoned a problem which could not be helped. “Now, I must go and dress for dinner. And before you say a word, Beth,” she added quickly, “you are dining with us. I warned you to bring at least one evening gown so you have no excuse.”

  “The rigors of the journey?” queried Beth drily.

  Jane was immediately contrite. “How thoughtless of me. Of course you will have a tray here.”

  “Oh no,” said Beth with a laugh. “If I’m to ape the aristocracy I may as well start now. You know I am not easily tired, Jane, and yes, I did bring not one but two presentable gowns.”